Wine Barrel Cleaning Impact Wine Quality

Wine Barrel Cleaning machines produce a dry steam which cleans, sanitises, detartrates and rehydrates wine barrels. With more than 25 years experience working with our dry steam machinery, Wine Barrel Cleaning’s cutting–edge equipment has incorporated our wine-industry experience into its design.

And the first big message it has to deliver is warm water alone merely provides a rinse.

Althuogh it may be at a warm temperature when it leaves the pressure washer, it is only 60-80 degrees Celsius once it gets to the wall of the barrel.

This temperature isn’t high enough to effectively safeguard your barrels from a number of factors which impact the quality of wine.

The following are some of negative outcomes which can occur when your wine barrel is not given a proper deep clean.

The build-up of Brettanomyces can be a major risk to the wine making process. Once there is a build-up of this yeast, it will spoil the wine and alter its taste.

The elimination of any bacteria only occurs when chemicals or high temperature steam are used.

Since chemical use isn’t viable for the wine making process, high temperature steam is the only process which will safeguard wine barrels from Brettanomyces and other volatiles.

High temperature steam is a leading method of cleaning all bacteria.

To see its power, we only need to look at the healthcare industry. The healthcare industry has bacteria and diseases which can be fatal – and can survive on surfaces for days, to months and to years.

Today, hospitals are using high temperature steam as part of their regular and outbreak cleaning routine to remove hospital acquired infections caused by bacteria such as Gastro. Brettanomyces, just like any deadly bacteria, can be killed within seconds upon contact with high temperature steam.

Therefore it is important to use similar approach as the healthcare industy have been doing with superheated dry steam temperature, and that can be applied to winemaking industry too, where the barrel disinfection matters.

Steam can also disintegrate and extract old wine build up that has been trapped within the pores.  Buckets of old wine can actually be extracted from a barrel that is previously thought to have been “clean”.

The use of steam to extract impurities is not a new concept. It has even been used for decades to cleanse pores within the beauty industry and is regularly used for the elimination of mould to fill spores. For any cleaning routine that involves deep cleaning, high temperature steam is a leading and convenient method.

The important thing to remember is the use of warm water is not the same as high temperature steam. Warm water can only rinse old wine from the surface, however, high temperature steam produced by steam cleaner actually deep cleans, disinfects, and prolongs the life of a barrel.

For more information about Wine Barrel Cleaning machines, visit winebarrelcleaning.com.au or email to info [at] winebarrelcleaning.com.au