Does anyone use PAA?

Just got a five gallon bucket of Peracetic Acid and wanted to know what people think about it. I normally use sodium percarbonate followed by sulfur citric for our tanks. This stuff intrigued me do to its cat like desire to kill anything that moves coupled with the amount of water we could save at the winery. What have your experiences been with it?

I’ve never used it myself, but I know it is very common in the brewing industry to neutralize caustic. Way more effective than citric. The brewing industry is way cleaner than the wine industry.

My stupid question of the day: how does it help you save water as compared to the caustic/citric combo?

I use a mix of bleach and lime. The bleach really accelerates the breakdown of the skin tissue, and the lime helps neutralize the odors- especially if you wrap the body in PVC. However, it isn’t a foolproof shortcut- you still need to deal with all other forensic evidence, and dna has made it a far more difficult task. Hope this helps.

I used to work out of a custom crush facility that used paracetic religiously. Everytime I walked by the container of the stuff, which had to be kept outside, I always thought, “Where’s the VA coming from?” I know it’s supposed to be effective, but I just can’t see using something that smells like extreme vinegar on my equipment and then just giving it a water rinse. I normally use peroxycarb, water, citric and water.

I’ve been using it religiously for at least 5 years. Love the stuff.

I originally had the same reaction as you, Ed (wait - you want me to get acetic acid and peroxide near my wine? Are you f-in nuts?) but haven’t had any problems. I don’t buy their “no-rinse” deal, though, and always hose out the tank afterwards, especially when I am going to use it soon thereafter.

I, too, have been using peroxetic(proprietary solution) for the last three years. I soak in warm sodium percarbonate to clean then citric to nuetralize, than peroxetic to sterilize. I, like others am peranoid about brett and think the extra effort pays off. I am always leary of finishing with citric as it can be used as a food source by brett. Right? Sometimes i will use tartaric/so2 to rince, but that gets pretty expensive to do on a regular basis.

The smell is a little unnerving to say the least. I started using it today and i definitely rinsed because the “vinegar factory” smell did’nt go away with air drying in 5 minutes like the nice salesman said.

Any negatives or learning experiences so far Guys?

I first used PAA in New Zealand and the winemaker said we do it to save water, but I never really followed up on it. Then I spent two lovely days at a water saving seminar in majestic Modesto last month. At this conference a lot of Big Winery folks talked about PAA saving water. This was because normally you would use a base and then rinse, and then citric & sulfur and then rinse. Instead they just used PAA and no rinse. Thus saving water by skipping a chemical, and two water rinses.

But I don’t really have the balls to fly into the black hole when it comes to not rinsing the PAA out.

The stuff I use smells way more of peroxide than vinegar to me.

Unless Finn keeps some super-secret stuff around the place, the 5-gallons of PAA, outside of your SO2 cannister, is probably the most dangerous thing you have in your winery (outside of your partially-sober intern on a 5,000-lb forklift). If you don’t believe me, spill some…It burns/etches concrete, clothes, and your skin.

So don’t gargle with it, shower in it, stack it precariously on top of a few buckets, put the spigot for measuring at eye level, and so on.

Once it’s diluted, it’s pretty innocuous (to humans at least). I’ll reach into a Brut of PAA to grab a fitting all the time, but think twice about doing the same in caustic (but usually do it anyways).

One quick story: We once pulled a bunch of 375ml samples to do an inventory tasting. Everything tasted terrible - the WM I was working for started freaking out, thinking nothing was fit to bottle and we were all going to get canned. The wines were brown and oxidized, etc. Out of barrel, the wines tasted fine. I came to find out that the person pulling the samples had been washing the sample bottles in caustic and peracetic, since we had some buckets made up of them for soaking fittings, etc. He didn’t rinse out the PAA but just stuck the bottles on the rack to dry.

So, it does have the potential to do bad things to wine…just like a lot of other stuff you use on a daily basis.

Thanks. Luckily I bought it. If Fin had been purchasing it he would have thought the 6% stuff i got was for little girls and Aussies.

Do you still use proxy before or just straight PAA.

Mine’s only 6% as well. Still, the stuff in the bucket is bad news. Once you dilute it with water, not so bad.

I’m kind of embarrassed to say, but PAA definitely doesn’t cut down on water use for me. To counteract, we save and reuse the formulations of TSP, citric and PAA over and over. Unfortunately, can’t do that with rinse water.

I use:

Non-Cl TSP - detergent for removing soils, tartrates, organic material, etc
Rinse
Citric - neutralize the TSP
Rinse
PAA - kill shit
Rinse b/c I don’t trust the stuff

Well shit! Im not looking for an extra step [suicide.gif]. I need to check the pH of my solution tomorrow. I was under the impression that PAA could neutralize bases pretty well.

Well shit! Im not looking for an extra step > [suicide.gif]> . I need to check the pH of my solution tomorrow. I was under the impression that PAA could neutralize bases pretty well.

It probably does. In this situation, as my old boss used to put it, I’m a “belt & suspenders” type of guy.

well said

Anyone looking for the “kill” factor with the fewest number of steps probably uses ozone, right? I just worry about using it indoors and all the future lung problems. We have an ozone machine at the outdoor winery where I work, but not at the indoor one.

I love the smell of ozone in the morining. Smells like…sanitization.


And considering the abuse that almost 36 years of waking and baking inflicted on my lungs, a little ozone just lets those boys know we are still in the game…

Our steam generator is on order and will be at the winery shortly. We won’t need any of that crap.

I think ozone would be it for sure. But it does stink up the whole winery with that nasty ozone smell. All in All its not so bad compared to the vinegary PAA smell. Unfortunately we dont have a full time ozone machine.

Just wait till you get an intern steamed . I only say this because you guys have, shall we say, a history with interns.