fining trials

In that case you can do what I do. No bench trials. Make your best bet as to what is causing the problem and try to fix it. If it does not work. Make your next guess and treat it again. I have rarely had to treat something twice. Actually I have started using SuperClear and it has rarely failed me. The best thing is that if it work, it works over night.

Ray

Why do you think it needs more fining? Was there a second fining agent that came with the kit that you didn't use it? I have only done a few chards from kits (I mainly do reds from grapes) - all 3 times there were 2 fining agents, and after using them both, the wine was perfectly clear.

As far as bench trials, you're right that 6 gallons doesn't let you do much. The only option is as you suggest - rack to a 5 gallon carboy and put the remainder in smaller bottles for your bench trials.

Ed

I don't make many kits and when I do, I usually don't follow the instructions but treat them as juice wines. What happened in this case, the kit had 2 fining packs for this stage - kieselsol and gelatin. Since I'd already used bentonite, I skipped the kieselsol and instead of gelatin used liquid isinglass. That was the first time I used that isinglass batch and it's quite possible it was too old - the net result was there was no further clearing and possibly the cloudiness even increased.

So since I've already left the beaten path and an into problems, I don't want to just dump the 2 kit packs in and hope for the best. Plus the wine has been bulk aging for months and has cleared up significantly, so using the full amount of finings from the kit seems like an overkill at this stage.

Pp

Ed Marks wrote:

The kits I've done in fact used bentonite and isinglass - and that combination worked great. I don't know how isinglass ages, or if it gets too old, but maybe that was the problem.

Ed