Cold Stabilization
The 2012 Riesling has been fermenting and clearing for six months. To lower the total acidity (tartaric) a bit and stabilize the wine, I need to ideally drop the temperature of the wine to 32 degrees for two weeks. There are a few ways this can be done. The first, a large freezer room, is out of the question for my small winery. The second option is to place a cooling line in the tanks that runs also through a chiller unit. Eventually I may build a chiller coil setup, but it would require modification to my tank lids. The chiller units and coils are also somewhat expensive, with the unit running $1500 to $4500 and the coils another $500 to $1000. The third option that small time winemakers sometimes employ is to put the tank in an ice bath. I decided to go with the third option. My tanks are large, four feet ...