"Darwin Vander Stelt" > wrote in message
...
> I used the spin cycle on the family maytag to centriguge 12 bottles of
gunk
> left after settling chardonnay. I ran it 2 cycles, and it sorta worked,
got
> about half the gunk I think. I quit because It seemed like there were
> currents inside the bottles which prevented it from fully depositing on
the
> side of the bottles, however I am wondering if I just quit too soon. My
> question: Is the success a function of time? Would 4 cycles have worked
> better than 2? Are bottle sizes an issue?

Longer spin time is better, but I found that the fast stopping when the
brakes come on tends to remix the gunk back into the juice/wine. That's why
I had an old machine modified to (1) disable the timer so that I could set
it to spin as long as I wanted, and (2) disable the brakes and interlock
so the tub spins down slowly. The Maytag man also put a different pulley on
the motor so that it spins a bit faster.

I use 2 liter bottles, which are as big as I can get in there. BTW, wine
lees separate better than juice lees. They're more cohesive - probably
because of the bentonite in them.

Tom S