Macguyvering a Venturi & Heating Wine?

Macguyvering a Venturi & Heating Wine?

Today I made my way to the pinot tanks for pumpovers expecting the usual, only to be surprised yet again by the wine making team at CSJ. To speed up fermentation and/or get the juice to a desired temperature faster…we are using a glycol heater during pumpovers. First off, all of CSJ tanks are temperature controlled…as easy as going from 60-65 on a chilly fall morning…however this apparently doesn’t happen fast enough…thus heating the wine with glycol…yes I said heat.
To conceptualize, the setup looks something like this. Wine out of tank into cart, out of cart into glycol tubes (which is hooked up to a portable heater), out of glycol tubes into pump, juice out of sprinkler back into top of tank.

Now I am not a winemaker, nor a scientist, but I have taken a few chemistry and physics classes in my day…enough to know a sliver of thermodynamics…well I suppose probably less than a sliver, but enough to know that heat rises and the correct way to heat something is from the bottom. Pumping a few hundred gallons on top of 6000 gallons to warm it “faster” seems unnecessary…I guess this is where you could get into the whole art vs. science fiasco…

Needless to say, the juice was heated from 81 to 83 after the glycol heated pumpover. This 2 degree change could easily be attributed to the fermentation itself and the endothermic process of sugar turning to alcohol and water with heat being released. But you never know…
Another device used to help speed up fermentation is called a venturi. This is not to be mistaken with the newest oenophilic rage of using a venturi like glass pourer to superficially aerate wine…whats wrong with a good old fashioned decanter?

In all fairness, this consumer venturi acts in much the same way as the venturi we use during selected pumpovers.
The name venturi comes from a physics effect apt dubbed…you guessed it, “The Venturi effect”. This is basically a complicated equation to show the how gain in velocity, drop in pressure, and gain in energy, occur in a tube or cylinder..yeah yeah yeah…

In winemaking we use a venturi to hook up to the sprinkler in pumpovers. The juice comes through the hose, passes through the venturi, then into the sprinkler. The venturi adds oxygen to the juice and yeast thus speeding up fermentation. Quasi interesting…it was more fun trying to build one from materials laying around the winery…

In a massive effort to complete pumpovers, we had 5 teams knocking em down side be side and not a venturi to be spared…I thought I had an idea on how to quickly mimick the venturi out of a T bar with a fire hose lever slightly opened on top…
The cellar approved, I gave it quick test…when it gave the same choking gurgle and spit some wine from the top, I knew I was in business…