Most winemaking failures can be traced to a lapse in cleaning or sanitizing.
Cleaning is the act of removing visible dirt and residue from your equipment.
Sanitizing is treating that equipment with a chemical that will eliminate, or prevent the growth of, spoilage organisms.
Everything that comes in contact with your wine must be clean and properly sanitized, from the hydrometer to the primary, carboy, paddle, syphon hose, bung and airlock. A single lapse could allow microorganisms other than your wine yeast, to multiply in your must, spoiling the entire batch.
The Home Vintner carries both diversol ( “ the pink stuff “ ) and aseptox.
Cleaning and Sanitizing
Diversol is a chlorine base and is an alkaline product. Rinsing is necessary.
Aseptox uses active oxygen to do its work. It consists of oxygen bonded to mineral crystals. When added to water, the crystals dissolve and release oxygen. After hydrogen does its work, it degrades into oxygen and water, leaving only the minerals behind. These minerals are naturally occurring compounds in the environment – in fact, there are appreciable amounts of them in our tap water. We suggest you also rinse when using aseptox.
Both diversol and aseptox clean AND sanitize. However, BE AWARE…if you live out in the country and you are on a septic system, you ABSOLUTELY MUST use aseptox only!!
(excerpt from Tim Vandergrift’s wine blog)
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