Clarification

Darlene is right. I have much the same experience. Most of my wines clear on there own in 6 to 12 months. Kit wines would probably do the same but they do not understand that time frame. But there are wines that are meant to be drunk very young and those you may want to force clear so you can get them in bottle sooner. Also, I believe it is Lum that advocates clearing agents as actually improving taste. Maybe he will respond.

In the cases where you need to clear your wine, what do you need to use? That depends on what is causing it to have a problem. Is it a pectin haze or is it something else? There is no one thing that will clear everything. When you have a problem, the trick is to not panic. Do a little research, determine what is causing the problem, and it can be fixed. But don't worry about it until you have a problem. Wine making should not be a hobby that increases anxiety.

Ray

everything.

Hi Ray,

Fining materials are used to remove one or more unwanted attributes from wine, so clarity is only one of many reasons for fining a wine. A wine might be fined with carbon to remove unwanted color, or with Sparkolloid to remove a haze, or with casein to remove bitterness, or with a protein material (gelatin, egg white, casein, etc.) to remove excessive astringency, etc. Sometimes two or more fining materials are needed to remove a single wine defect. At other times, a single fining agent can eliminate multiple wine problems. For example, a murky, blush wine having excessive color might be fined with Bentonite. The single Bentonite application might (1) remove excessive protein and make the wine "hot" stable. It might also (2) improve the clarity of the murky wine and (3) it might remove a small amount of the excess color.

Wine has been made for thousands of years, and over that time many different substances (like blood, horses hoofs, etc.) have been used as wine fining materials. Some fining materials require special application techniques, and each material produces a different characteristic in the wine. So, fining wine can be a complicated issue.

Lum Del Mar, California, USA

David - As mentioned by other posters, most folks who make wine from grapes or fruit (not kits) probably use fining agents only on wine that hasn't cleared on its own after some reasonable length of time (probably 6 months or more). Most fresh grape wines or "country" wines (from other fruits) will take a year or more of aging before they are really drinkable, so the wine usually has plenty of time to settle out and clear on its own.

However, not all fining agents are alike. Different things are effective against different root causes. Simple example - if you've made wine from something with a lot of natural pectin (apples, for example) this may cause the wine to remain just a bit hazy. For this, you would add some pectic enzyme. If the cause is something other than pectin, though, adding pectic enzyme won't help. (It won't hurt either - it just won't make any difference.)

As discussed on Jack Keller's excellent web site

Red wines tend to have a lot of tannin (negatively charged). Since anything with a positive charge has probably already bound with some tannin and settled out of a red wine, any remaining problem stuff is probably also negatively charged. With whites, tannin levels are low, so the problem source could be either positive or negative. (I usually assume positive for the first pass.)

If I don't really know what is causing the problem (most of the time!), I usually just try something based on whether the wine is red or white.

Borrowing from Jack's site (again), the list would include:

Whites: bentonite, Kieselsol, tannin, yeast

Reds: Isinglass, Chitosan, Sparkolloid, gelatin, albumin, casein

In your case, I'm not sure the apple concentrate would need anything special. The apple cider might well contain a fair amount of pectin, so I'd add some pectic enzyme (pectinase) during fermentation or as soon as you can. (No rush, but no reason to wait.) I wouldn't add gelatin to either of them. If/when the apple batches failed to clear (give them at least 4 to 6 months), I'd try bentonite first.

For the Chianti, you should just follow the directions with the kit. (And enjoy - the inexpensive Chianti kits I make get consistently positive reviews from family and friends.) For the others, I'd consider them all white wines (broadly speaking) and try one fining agent at a time (if necessary).

Happy fermenting -

Doug

Thanks for all the info. So in essence it doesn't really matter if I use a fining agent or not if I plan on aging the wine for more than 6 months or so. Unless of course the wine doesn't clear in it's own.

Thanks,

David

One more question...

Let's say I just want my carboy back for another batch. Is there any negative to adding the fining agent to speed up the clarification and just aging the wine in bottles? Or is it much better to bulk age and clear naturally? The kits tell me to age as soon as it is clear. Carboys are pretty cheap, I wouldn't want to sacrifice my fine for a 10 dollar carboy. But if there is no difference bottles are much easier to stick away.

Thanks,

David

Well, that kinda depends on your tolerance for deposits in your bottles. I prefer to age until clear and then bottle - at the most I'll get a dusting in my bottles. A friend of mine sent me a bottle of wine last year - he rushed his wine into the bottles (it was only 3 months old when he bottled it). The wine was good if you could wrap yourself around the idea that there was a good 1/2 inch of debris in the bottom of the bottle. Everyone has there own way of doing things - I wouldn't send someone a bottle which had that much stuff in the bottom of the bottle, but it didn't bother him. For the cost of buying a new carboy for aging, I think it is worth it. Besides bulk aging is important in winemaking. As soon as I build up my cellar, I will start to bulk age some of my wines a bit longer than I am now. Darlene

That's a gross oversimplification. Fining isn't done only to achieve clarity; it's best use is to improve the _flavor_, and sometimes the aroma, of wine.

Tom S

I don't think I worded my question correctly. What I meant to ask about was adding the fining agent to the carboy and let it sit until clear then bottle vs. waiting 6 months for it to clear on it's own and bottling. I don't want sediment in my bottles :-)

I guess what I am ultimately trying to find out is, and it could be a loaded question...

What is better for my wine?

1. Bulk aging with no fining agent and clearing naturally.
2. Bulk aging with fining agent.
3. Bottle aging after clearing in carboy with fining agent.

Or does it not even matter and I am worrying too much?

I have head many things from many different places. Some say fining agents remove flavor that would other wise develop over time. Some say that fining agents will enhance flavor.

David

I have been making wine since 1978 and this is all I ever do: When fermentation ceases, I add sulfites to the wine to stop everything. Then, after it has cleared, I rack it off the lees into a fresh carboy with sorbate or sodium benzoate and let it clear so perfectly that my $2.99 laser pointer shines through it with no cloudiness whatever and makes a microdot on the wall behind it. It is the perfect test for clarity! :-) I also make sure that the water in the airlock has settled to an equal position on both sides, so I know fermentation and outgassing are complete. This takes about six months from mixing up to bottling. I have 5 gallons of apple that passed the laser test yesterday....

I have a laser pointer I will have to try that. I recently bottled a chardonnay that appeared to be clear to me at the time. After a week or so in bottles the wine was now CRYSTAL clear with some haze at the bottom of the bottles. Oh well. The laser would have come in handy.

You know, I am glad I started with kits because they are a good introduction to the chemistry involved and practically guarantee a drinkable wine. But I believe they have helped make me inpatient, which is something I am working on now. I truly believe now that patience is the real key to making a good wine as it is doing other things well in life. I am a programmer and working in a world where everything is in immediate demand it is very easy to forget what a virtue patience can be.

David

Be careful not to let the pointer reflect back in your eye though.

Good Call :-)

Back in '99 while working for an estate winery I got my greedy little hands on a few bottles barrel aged chard that had been in the barrel for 6 months. This was strong oaky chard and quite tasty but it hadn't not reach cold stabilization. After 3 weeks in the bottle I had tartrate crystals hazing the glass bottle. The rest of the barrel stock was blended into a non oaked chard and the haze jumped right out. The solution was to place the wine in the refridgerated tank at -4'C for a week. I wasn't worried about my 3 bottles so I enjoyed a great wine from hazy bottles.

There are some sediments that will pass the laser test as they are in solution until they precipitate out naturally or after a catalyst addition.

Both statements can be true for the same wine!

The idea is to _improve_ the flavor of the wine, and secondarily to render it free of cloudiness.

The choice, combination and amount(s) of fining agent(s) is very important. The only sure way to tell what's right for a given wine is to conduct fining trials. IOW, it isn't a "one size fits all" recipe.

I'm not suggesting that you try all possible combinations of all available fining materials. There are a couple that you should include at minimal levels no matter what you're making. These are bentonite and kieselsohl. A typical dose of these would be ~2-3 pounds/1000 gallons bentonite and between ½ and 1 pound/1000 gallons kieselsohl. These will sometimes be sufficient all by themselves - especially if the wine doesn't have aggressive tannins to tame. They will help prevent the wine from throwing protein haze in the bottle. This is mainly a problem with white wines, but certain reds (Pinot Noir in particular) tend to throw protein haze as well. If you plan to filter the wine, this combo will also help keep your filters from becoming blinded.

In addition to those, you can reduce tannins and improve mouthfeel with a dose of either gelatin, egg whites, isinglass, or several other proprietary compounds. Feel free to experiment! That's how you get a feel for what's likely to work for your application best.

Do a little reading to give you an idea of appropriate ranges for how much to add to your wine. Do trials in 750 ml bottles. Generally, a 9% solution of whatever you're working with is added to the wine, dropwise with stirring, from a volumetric pipette. (You're going to have to work on your lab technique to do this right!)

After you've added the bentonite and kieselsohl, for openers try four adjustments with gelatin, side by side. Do ¼ lb./1000 gal., ½ lb./1000 gal., 1 lb./1000 gal. and 2 lb./1000 gal. That's four 750 ml samples. Mix them up thoroughly and let them settle for at least a day, or until they're clear. Then taste them all, side by side - preferrably when your palate is fresh. Don't do this right after eating, smoking or brushing your teeth with toothpaste! Note the differences among them, and see which you prefer. It might happen that you think one is a little harsh, but the next one above it is too stripped of flavor. Mix equal parts of the two and see how that tastes. Taste the control sample, which is the unfined wine. I'm sure you get the idea. When you figure out what works best for your wine, scale up the quantities of the fining agent(s) for your batch size and treat the entire lot.

I know this all sounds like a pain in the ass, but it can be one of the most rewarding aspects of winemaking. This is where art and science converge - turning ordinary wines into good wines, and good wines into _great_ wines!

Tom S

The best things in life cannot be rushed. Wine is one, sex is another.... ;-)

consistently