Wireless sensing platform for remote monitoring and control of wine fermentation

Abstract

Predictable winemaking depends upon the control of all the factors that affect fermentation, including the grape varieties, yeast selection, enzyme addition, the size and type of the vats, the temperature control regime, nutrient selection, and pumping regimes. The relationship between yeast behaviour and temperature control is well understood, forming the fundamental basis of winemaking. Temperature control in fermentation is crucial to the development of desirable flavours, alcohol levels and colour in all wine making grape varieties. Continuing issues in winemaking include the problems in measuring temperature across a vat, with the existence of large temperature gradients in vats as well as the inability of a single temperature reading to identify temperature differentials across fermentation vats leading to fermentation issues. A seemingly accurate measurement of temperature may be completely incorrect, at potentially high cost. Furthermore, we cannot have the most experienced winemakers everywhere at the same time; therefore, we must depend upon automated measurement and temperature control systems in a number of cases. In this paper we propose a low cost sensor array capable of measuring temperature gradients across vats for real time monitoring of wine fermentation processes and the development of a decision support system based on fuzzy logic to aid winemaking decisions. We have built and tested (both through simulations and in a wine fermentation tank) our system.