Check out these stainless steel machining images:
hoses-below
Image by sillydog
You never know who you’ll meet in a winery. I don’t know if there was ever a time where women didn’t do harvest work, but it seems pretty common for romances to flare up if even half the stories are true.
photo by Andrew Koegh
heating#10
Image by sillydog
When getting ready to add yeast, like bread, you need to warm the medium up. It’s inconvenient in the extreme to heat the whole darn tank so it’s better to heat up a little pocket and let the yeast release heat for the rest of their friends.
First you insert the torpedo and bungee the intake and outgoing hoses to it. This keeps you from sucking skins and seeds up into the heating/cooling machine, where they might get stuck. The heating/cooling unit is a large, "portable" unit with a pump inbetween. The pump is powerful enough to not only move a great deal of wine, but to also rip your hoses out and spill wine all over if you’re not careful. Depending upon how warm the tank is to start, it takes anywhere from 10-45 minutes to appropriately heat an 8-ton tank, not including the considerable set-up and disinfecting time.
While we set up the first tank, Rich brought us a bit of prepared yeast. It’s dissolved in a small amount of water and gently brought up to at least room temperature in a warm water bath. As soon as it’s proofed, it’s ready to be added to a nice hot pocket. Travis and I heated and yeasted 3 tanks (#s 10, 13 and 37) that day — each one with one pocket at 80F / 26.7C. It took a day or two for a proper cap to form, but it definately worked.
Chai’s lug vises
Image by evershedm