Barrel Conditioning
- Reduce spoilage costs, increase barrel life, enhance oak transfer
- Removes tartrates, anthocyanins,solid residues and biofilms
- Kills Brettanomyces and other spoilage microorganisms, from the interior surfaces and subsurface of oak wood
- No deleterious effect on the pore structure of oak wood.
How it Works
A large tuning fork, called a sonotrode, is inserted into a barrel full of warm water (140 degrees). The ultrasonic (high frequency) waves emitted cause the dissolved gas bubbles in water to both expand and then contract thousands of times per second. As the bubbles collapse (implode), a cavitation results, and this strong agitation is what cleans the surfaces.
The unit is totally self-contained with on-board water heaters, water reclamation and filtration systems. A conveyor track will fill and clean two barrels at a time. After the sonotrode is withdrawn, the clean barrels are inverted, briefly rinsed and removed. All water remains within a containment cycle, which is periodically back flushed and filtered to .45 microns.