On Feb 21, 8:49*pm, AxisOfBeagles wrote:
Only thing I don;t understand there - "shold be 1-5 of the volume of
the juice" ?? what does that mean?

I buy the small dried bacteria packets. I pitch them directly into the
fermenting must. Some folks start it in water, much as we do yeast (for
my reds, i figure it has a year or two to do it's thing, so I'm not too
worried about making it start right away - but it always does!).

On 2008-02-21 17:05:11 -0800, Wayne Harris said:

I've never done it. But read enough to know that I think i should be.
BTW, everything I know about MLF I am reading in Philip Jackisch's
"Modern Winemaking" book. *In it, he states:
"The ML culture can be added to red wines at the time of pressing,
ordinarily at about 5 deg Brix. and should be 1-5 of the volume of the
juice."
That is from Chapter 5 "Microorganisms and Fermentation" *Page 79.

So, sounds like the old timers were dead on.

Sorry - potential Typo:

Should have read "1-5% of the total volume"

Very sorry.