"Dan Emerson" > wrote in message
om...
> "steve small" > wrote in message
>...
> > Hi folks,
> > I just wanted to get your input into the topic of topping up you
barrels -
> > specifically how frequently you are topping them up.
> >
> > I have several small barrels (around 50Litres) and have been in the
habit of
> > topping them up weekly. My reading suggest that some people do this more
or
> > less frequently or possibly not at all.... any comments?
> >
> > steve
>
> And another question. If you have to top up every week or so with 100
> to 200 ml of wine, where does that top up wine come from? How do you
> store variable volumes of wine for topping up? You can't take 100 ml
> from a carbouy. Do you bottle wine prematurely? I suppose you could
> top up with commercial wine and drink the remainder. What do you do?
>
> Getting a barrel next year.
>
> Dan

Steve, Dan and All,

Barrels exchange roughly 2 ml of oxygen (O2) per liter of wine per year.
So, a 50 liter barrel exchanges 2 X 50 = 100 ml of O2 per year.
Or, 100 / 52 ~ 2 ml O2 per week.
Air contains about 20 ml of O2 per 100 ml.
So leaving 100 ml of head space in a small barrel just about doubles the
oxygen input.

100 ml is a pretty small head space, so I'm not sure that topping small
barrels once a week is necessarily a good thing. But, maybe may arithmetic
is wrong????

lum