How to grow oenococcus oeni?

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How to grow oenococcus oeni?..

Answer / dan stingl

Boil to sterilize a quantity of fresh wine (crushed red
grapes having gone through primary yeast fementation with
no sulfites but plenty of yeast). Use a malic acid test
strip and record the malic acid level. Introduce the freeze
dried oenococcus oeni into warmed distiled water according
to the instructions. Add this to the boiled wine which has
cooled to the same tempurature. Shake this mixture with
air to introduce some oxygen into the boiled wine. Fill a
sterile (or very cleam) container completely full with an
air lock. The bacteria will grow until all of the malic
acid is gone releasing some carbon dioxide. The time it
takes is tempurature dependent. Use this to innoculate
your other wine. This will save you lots of money; the
freeze dried bacteria is expensive. If you use wooden
barrels the yeast and oenococcus will remain in the cracks
and pores of the wood for next batch of wine.

To see your bacteria, centrifuge 10 cc and pipette the
bottom drop onto a glass slide, gently heat fix and gram
stain. Oenococcus oeni is a round gram positive bacterium
in chains and groups of 4.

Theoretically, you could add a very small quantity of
reconstituted freeze dried oenococcus directly to every
batch of wine. Unfortunately, unless you offer enough
indivdual bacteria, other bacteria may outgrow it or at
least grow enough to add off flavors.