Bulk ageing in glass

[fatbloke]

I don't know what a 5 gal is but a 10 gal (54l) in a tamijohn (tammi gianni)

Well I can't say for Brians maths skills, but 54 litres is 11.86 imperial gallons (4.55litre per gallon).

As for what the commercial vineyards seem to to ? Well as far as I can find out down here, they will ferment in stainless, then rack to the bottling plant and it's racked and aged in bottles, not in fermenters or in DJ's/carboys. The difference ? that "they", seem to have large, temperature controlled storage, where the bottles that are ageing are in stillages that contain X amount of bottles. Of course, they seem to keep their ageing at the same sort of temps as you'd find in a "proper" wine cellar - from what I can find out, that's about 54F/12.2C

With home brewing, it does appear that bulk storage is about consistency, as we lack the ability to retain the stuff that's ageing in a constant temp - so bulk ageing is a home brewers trade off, that we can then, at least, keep things consistent.

As for the difference between carboy and demi-john ? well it's pretty much down to semantics. It just happens that the ones with a finger lug or two we tend to refer to as demi-john (I appreciate that there may be some link to the Italian/Latin etc), whereas those that we refer to as carboys tend to be of the "bulb" shape, and currently can be obtained with the plastic baskets/lids - though from a slightly older POV, would have had wire cages and be padded with straw (and contained an industrial chemical of some sort initially i.e. an acid, invariably). Hence it's down to whatever flavour of liquid was originally "in it" and how it was shipped at the time.

Of course, DJ's and caboys, have long since fallen out of favour here, you can get 26 IBC's into a 45ft/13.8 metre trailer with a little space over and it still fit's within the weight criteria of less than 44 tonnes (current maxiumum "normal" UK road weight). Or a bit more if you have the correct type of tanker vessel.

[Cellar_Rat]

Well I can't say for Brians maths skills, but 54 litres is 11.86 imperial gallons (4.55litre per gallon)..

not me guv!! Italiano - they come in various shapes/sizes/colours/capacities and are all "known as" 10 gallon. Drives me beserk and it's one of the reasons I have given up on them. Makes racking a mare too. They are also heavy, not stackable, fragile, dangerous and difficult to clean.

Your bit about commercial wineyards - spot on - bulk storage is just that - larger quantities of wine do fair much much better. If your storage varies by 5c for 3 hours, it will have much less effect on an 1000l vessel. However wine in DJ's will feel the effect.