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Question about wine conditioner

My first gallon of mead... I went against convention and did not boil the water and honey together. I will next time. I wound up with quite a hazy mead. I fined with a good amount of bentonite, for a good amount of time, following fining instructions per Jack K. It was considerably better but still not as clear as desired. I went ahead and bottled it. It was just a tad dryer than I wanted so I used a conditioner/sweetener before bottling, with invert sugar and K sorbate. I used a sparing amount. What happened overnight after bottling was a miraculous clearing with a 1/2-inch gelatinous sediment at the bottom of each bottle. I carefully uncorked and poured the contents, less sediment, back into a gallon jar secondary. Did the conditioner really behave as a clearing agent? and if so how? Anyway, the mead tastes great, and is clear as a bell. Just wondering if anyone has seen something like this, or can perhaps explain just what happened.

Quixote

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Quixote
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Lots of thing can trigger clearing, especially if you have used a fining agent. It may have bound to the haze and was just not quite heavy enough to fall out. Adding something else to the wine can change to dynamics and cause it to settle very quickly. I have read in old winemaking books that you can add a bottle of mature wine and it may cause a hazy wine to clear.

On the other side, wine conditioner is not generally recommended. That is, if it is what I am thinking of. It is generally a mixture of sweetener, sorbate, and maybe a few other chemicals. The problem with using it is that if you sweeten your wine you need a certain amount of sorbate to stabilize the wine. But you need the same amount for a little sweetener or for a lot. When you use a conditioner, you will get a little sorbate for a little sweetening and lot of sorbate for a lot of sweetening. In other words you are likely to get too little or too much sorbate. Probably too much. In the future I would recommend that you used sorbate and sweetener separately. Use the right amount of sorbate and then sweeten to taste. It is really very easy.

It is never a good idea to bottle a wine that is less than perfectly clear. It will come back on you. I have used SuperKleer with white wines and meads. It generally clears over night and you are done with it. It is a two step process where you do the steps about 5 min's apart and it will get most anything in there. Just a suggestion.

Finally, I make a lot of mead and I never boil my honey. Boiling will remove or destroy a lot of the varietieal character of a good honey. If you are really interested in making meads you might want to visit the rec.crafts.meadmaking site. Also consider Ken Schramm's, The Complete Meadmaker.

Ray

Reply to
Ray Calvert

Good to know...

Well this has too little, as I added a very small amount. I will keep this all in mind...

Will look it up, my local shop is kind of sparse on diversity of supplies, but I am pretty luck to have on near. I was under the impression that bentonite was one of the best finers.. hmmm

Well, this is the exact reason I did not boil. While grapes are in short supply here in south Texas, honey comes in many varied and delicious varieties. I read that the boiling allows scum to collect and be scooped from the top, so blamed my haze on lack of this step. I will check out the book. The mead tastes great, and I will be making more. I have done some beekeeping in the past, and still have the equipment. I might just start up a new hive or 2...

Thanks a bunch for the info. :^)

Quixote

Reply to
Quixote

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