Pectic Enzyme

1.) Breaks down pectin, a jelly found in all plants (more in the good jelly making fruits -- and rubarb is one of those). In wine, it takes a long time to settle out, if it does at all. 2.) Your recipie is either: very old or doesn't want to bother you with the purchase, or the author doesn't like "techy" additions.

Sugestion: read many more recipies, find a rubarb recipie that uses pectinase. Read other recipies for the fruits. All so you get a feel for wine making, then decide to robotically follow your recipie, or work out some hybrid recipie, and put your name on it. (Assumeing the wine comes out good)

In the "typical" wine amking recipie, after flavor extraction with hot water, or 24 hrs after sulfite to sanitize the fruit, add a small amout of pectinase, wait another 24 hrs, then pitch yeast. Any shortcuts will lead to disappointment, I know, I tried.

I am going to have to disagree here. Rhubarb is a medium pectin fruit at best. I find it is very low in pectin.

The recipe does not have pectinase for this reason. I have never use pectinase in a rhubarb wine and have never had a problem with clearing.

I agree than rhubard is fairly low in pectin, but I add pectinase anyway. I figure it can't hurt.

Just to toss in my 2 cents, some rhubarb recipes (and the only ones I have experimented with) use sugar to extract the juice/flavour (by virtue of osmosis), while others involve heating of the fruit. If you are heating the fruit you are more likely to have a pectin problem I think.

Mike