For those who dont innoculate: Do you always add kmeta at crush?

ssia

Sometimes inoculate and sometimes not. One winery I work with usually adds a small amount of SO2 (10% solution) at crush, the other almost never adds any (unless there is some problem with the fruit - botrytis, etc.). In general, I don’t see much point in adding it at crush if you are planning to go with an uninoculated fermentation.

Health of the fruit determines.
If healthy, I do spontaneous ferments and add nothing.
Best, Jim

Agree with the previous statements.
I don’t inoculate and as long as is good clean sorted fruit no so2 add to whole clusters or destemmed fruit. If any mold issues then a 10-20ppm add.

Often with uninoculated fermentations I get VA at the very beginning of the fermentation. Usually it blows off when the fermentation gets hot enough but last year I had a fermenter where it never blew off and IMO created a flawed wine. Ive been a bit spooked since then. For my first ferment this year I added 20ppm at crush and it felt wrong so now Im debating it again.

It’s mainly the Kloeckera yeast that are producing the EA and they are quite sulfur tolerant…so I agree with Ken that depending on sulfur here isn’t going to help that much. Kloeckera is very alcohol sensitive…they’ll stop reproducing at 2% alc I believe and will die off at 6 or 8% alc. One benefit of this is the Kloeckera consumes sugar to produce EA, which blows off (hopefully), rather than alcohol (which, for the most part, doesn’t)…so you can get a slightly lower conversion ratio this way (not sure it’s that meaningful tho).

It can be a challenge to get the ferment temps up high enough to blow off the EA when the ferment is half ton or smaller…esp if it’s outside at night and not in a Tbin (i.e. not in an insulated container). Fish tank heaters (the glass foot+ long rod style fish tank heaters) can be a big help here. Set the heater to 80 degrees. The heater will have way too little wattage to do much heating of the must…but it will provide a warm region for the yeast to get going…and the yeast will do the heating after that.

Thanks Eric for the response.

Bacteria do as well, no?

Possibly…makes conceptual sense. Tho I’ve never read (that I recall) about bacteria being an EA/VA factor early on.

I always do uninoculated fermentations these days (since 08), and almost always add 5-10 ppm SO2 at the crusher. A couple of lots in 2011 were vigorously sorted, but bumped the SO2 up to 20ppm on those for insurance. Still went with uninoculated tho and am quite please with the results. My 11s might be my favorite set of wines I’ve made…tho they are still young yet.

But don’t you know that 2011 Pinots are crappy? All the highly-respected wine critics tell us so. [roll-eyes.gif]

“Highly-respected?”
Shhhhitttt.
Best, Jim

I think the bacteria that produce VA/EA are converting alcohol and they also need oxygen. So, I’d also think the yeast are the main producers early on.

-Al

Keeping the head space sparged of O2 will help, see the cold soak thread for more info. If your having trouble getting heat to build to blow off some things put the fermentors in the sun for a bit. I have black covers and once in a while have one that just does not want to heat up on its own. A few hours in the sun on the crush pad really gets things going. Make sure your fermentors are full. I don’t like maco bin ferments for the fact that they don’t seem to build enough heat. Full t-bins (.8 ton for me due to whole clusters) hit 90-95* for at least 24 hours with no issues. In 2011 with a late harvest and cool temps I had to put all the t-bins against each other to help them all build heat. These last few years I keep them 2ft. apart due to early harvest and warmer temps.

I do scorpions for yeast and bacteria after a day or 2 to see whats in there. They may help you isolate a vineyard or block thats going to give you trouble down the road.

Thanks for the great advice everyone.