The Latest News & Information from Colour Technologies Australasia and The Novasys Group

FOOD & BEVERAGE INDUSTRY EDITION

Volume F5 Issue 1 10 May 2006

Table of Contents

1. Save Energy. Cut Costs. Reduce Greenhouse gases and nutrient loads in reservoirs with NO chemicals.
2. "On the Spot" Wine and Grape Testing? Yes...Yes...Yes...
3. The Colours of Wine
4. There's Never (Well, Hardly Ever!) Been a Better Time to Spend a Dollar!
5. Longer Shelf-life for ACCUVIN Test Kits
6. Fun Stuff........

Save Energy. Cut Costs. Reduce Greenhouse gases and nutrient loads in reservoirs with NO chemicals.

Too good to be true? No.

SolarBee is a floating, solar-powered reservoir circulator with a unique capability to:

· Eliminate cyanobacteria (“blue-green algae”) blooms
· Enhance water clarity and secondary production
· Oxygenate lake bottom waters and sediments to prevent release of hydrogen sulphide gas, iron, manganese and phosphorous
· Prevent seasonal fish kills
· Reduce nuisance aquatic weed growth
· Replace 20-35 Kw of aeration – with better results
· Pump up to 38,000 litres/minute with near-laminar flow.

ALL without any toxic chemicals, or fossil fuel consumption.

Additionally, SolarBee is economically sized for virtually any capacity lake or reservoir, is easily installed, requires minimal maintenance and operates day and night using solar energy only.

SolarBee is being used in fresh water lakes and reservoirs, facultative lagoons, enclosed potable water storages and for aquaculture.

New CD’s are available with Video’s, PowerPoint Presentations and the latest literature in PDF format. Hard copy literature is also available.

Call, write, fax or email us for your copy.

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"On the Spot" Wine and Grape Testing? Yes...Yes...Yes...

Grapegrowers and Winemakers:

· Can you get test results, any time, on the spot, in the winery and in the vineyard?
· Are the tests free of any sample preparation?
· Are the tests easy to perform, requiring no lab. training?
· Are the tests free of expensive, complicated lab. equipment?
· Are the tests complete and results available in from 30 sec to 5 minutes?
· Are easy-to-use instructions included with every kit?
· Is the underlying chemistry explained with each kit?
· Are easily understood aids to interpretation of results included with each kit?
· Are samplers included with every test kit to easily ensure correct sample amounts are used?
· Do the tests raise your winemaking skills to new levels by providing instant answers to MLF? pH and SO2? Residual Sugar? Titratable Acidity? Freeing you to address more sophisticated concerns?
· Are the tests supported by expert wine chemists?
· Is the cost of any single test less than $3.00?

The answers to all of the above questions are “YES… YES… YES!!!” when ACCUVIN “QUICK TESTS™” are used.

Tests are available in kits of 10 and 20. (Lactic Acid, 5 only).

Also available is the “Full Pocket Lab” containing 5 of each of all tests except Lactic Acid (3 tests) and Free SO2 (sold separately).

All tests can be purchased direct at www.novasysdirect.com.au or contact us.

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The Colours of Wine

It is interesting to read in the March/April issue of the “Wine Industry Journal” that the CRC for Viticulture is extolling the virtues of objective colour measurement to increase our understanding of how grape colour and winemaking and maturation affect the actual colour we see in wine.

Colour is the first sensory property to be perceived in the glass by the consumer, winemaker and wine judge.

We reported quite some time back of the work of Maria Birse, a PhD student with the CRCV. Maria’s valuable work in gaining recognition of the use of full-spectrum spectrophotometry to objectively measure colour is beginning to have its effect in the wine industry.

For some reason, the wine industry has been rather slow to adopt spectrocolorimetry as a method of objective sensory evaluation, unlike most of the rest of the food and beverage industries. The USDA for example, has developed an analogous fast colorimetric method for determining the lycopene concentration in red fruits such as tomatoes, replacing a slower and complex method using hexane extraction followed by HPLC.

Much of Maria’s work has been with the relationship between anthocyanins and the colours of red wines, (particularly Shiraz and cabernet sauvignon, a very valuable area of study, but we hope that white and rose wines are not overlooked.

We believe there is some value in investigating the relationship between the colour of the skins red wine berries – where anthocyanins are concentrated – and the anthocyanin concentration in the related wines. This means relating or correlating reflectance measurements of the berries with transmission/absorbance measurements of the wines.

HunterLab transmission instruments provide objective results in all recognised colour scales, (such as CIELab), in transmission, reflectance and absorbance in the visible region of the spectrum.

Contact us for more details.

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There's Never (Well, Hardly Ever!) Been a Better Time to Spend a Dollar!

There’s never (well, hardly ever,) been a better time to spend a dollar!

A US dollar, that is.

If you have been contemplating acquisition of a HunterLab instrument, or a SolarBee reservoir circulator, or anything Made in the USA, now is as good a time as any, while the US$ is weak against the Aussie dollar.

You don’t even have to pay for it right away.

Most of our customers would qualify for an operating lease arrangement. This means an off balance sheet, monthly payment from your expense budget, instead of a lump sum from scarce capital. Installation, training and other incidentals can be bundled into the deal.

Ask for a quote today, for both the equipment and the operating lease.

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Longer Shelf-life for ACCUVIN Test Kits

Accuvin have introduced a light and moisture barrier black tube that will provide a one-year shelf life for:

Malic Acid
L-Lactic Acid
Residual Sugar

to join pH kits that already have a shelf life of one year.

We are currently arranging to have all MA. LA and RS kits in stock replaced with the new kits. This will mean a temporary delay in delivery for any kits ordered within the next 10 days.

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Fun Stuff........

Everything you wanted to know about armadillos….
http://www.msu.edu/~nixonjos/armadillo/

You want a quote……Here they are!
http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/quotes/funny/

Here are the patents that you wonder why the inventor bothered…..
http://www.totallyabsurd.com/absurd.htm

Satellite photos of the damage caused by the tsunami to Aceh…..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/flash/photo/world/2004-12-30_quakesatellite/movie.htm?startat=1

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