gene wrote:
> ahhhhh... I follow your thought now... You are right on for during
> crush. My brain presently stuck in racking time now.
> The 'whole process only as strong as the last sanitizer' seems to assume
> same bad bugs whole time. Are you sure that is correct assumption?
>
> Gene



Well, the things that can infect your wine will be present in your
winery microenvironment to begin with. The relative concentrations can
change, like it has been established that you should not make vinegar
in the same place that you make wine.....even if you have dedicated
equipment.

But say you have a carboy that has some contaminant microbe in it. You
wash it out with fairly clean tap water. Then you nuke it with bleach.
Then you rinse it out with sulfite and lets assume that it is not in
the water. Then you make up your must, pitch yeast and stir it a
couple time daily.

Well whatever microbe was present in your microenvironment just got in
to your wine. The only time I would ever worry about such strict
sanitation is if it had becoma problem Liek a batch really got skanked
up. Then I would pour the stuff down the toilet and bleach the crap
out of teh carboy. Which is along the lines of what a winery would do.
You can take action after you get an infection, but you cannot really
prevent it from occuring by up front sanitation. You always get back
to the fact that you are bringing in something that has the
contaminating microbes on it. As long as your equipment is clean it
will assuredly have less microbial contaminants on it when compared to
the fruit. Especially if you use tap water, which has to be relatively
clean.