Fining Agents For Wine

Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum

Help Support Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Tom

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 6, 2006
Messages
11,355
Reaction score
110
For all those who been asking about fining (clearing) their wine.

A few post have suggested to use Egg Whites. Here is a follow up on that and a URL for others.







This is always better to err on the low side when doing a fining and ideally first do few bench tests. So here is the correct way of doing it :

''Egg albumen. Egg albumin is a common fining agent for red wines. Albumen is found in egg whites. Fresh eggs

contain approximately 3 to 4g of active product per white and are preferred over frozen egg whites. Albumen is colloidal in

nature and has a positively charged surface that attracts negatively charged tannins. Egg whites remove fewer phenols and

less of the fruit character than gelatin. To prepare the albumin, make a 0.7% salt solution (about 1/2 teaspoon per cup of

water). Measure the volume of the egg whites and mix with 2 times the volume of salt solution. For example, if you have

30 mL of egg white (1 egg) you need 60 mL of salt water. Lightly mix the egg whites and salt water until they become less

sticky and gently stir into the wine. Do not mix into a froth. Usage levels vary from 1 to 8 egg whites per 60 gallon barrel,with 2 to 4 being average.''
Herre is the url http://www.uark.edu/depts/ifse/grapeprog/articles/nmc14wg.pdf
 
Fantastic post with great information. Thank you for posting that up. While many will still use a commercial bought fining agent it is always nice to know there are other ways out there that are tried and true over the generations.
 
Thanks Smurfe,
I hope you all save and print the URL.




FYI I just made 10 gallons of Chocolate Oatmeal Stout 6+%.. Ohh the smeel...HMM... hic hic....
smiley36.gif
smiley36.gif
 
Sounds yummy. I haven't brewed for a while now. I am still waiting for my brew system to get here. Hopefully any time now. I had such a stock of beer that I needed to drink down. I am about there so I will have plenty of room for all the stuff I am gonna brew when that thing gets here. I have nothing left in kegs and am on my last case of Ordinary Bitter. If I do run out I have a pretty extensive stock of commercial beer to survive on till I get back to brewing.
 
Just be careful with Albumen fining. It usually is a treatment for overly tannic wines as it first grabs the tannins rather than suspended particulate. Usually, as home winemakers, we need the extra tannins if making from kits as they are quite low on them to start.
 
I dont feel comfortable with the process myself. Not familiar with it enough. How does the egg not go bad in the wine?
 
wade said:
I dont feel comfortable with the process myself. Not familiar with it enough. How does the egg not go bad in the wine?


Wade,
I fully inderstand. I guess thats why there are so many different things you can do. But in defense early winemakers didnt have all these chemicals for clear wine just eggs. In fact some Italian wineries thats what they use.
 
Im not at all saying dont do it, just dont know anything about it and am not afraid to say that. Any idea what prevents the egg from going bad, The abv?
 
That's what I am thinking. We have a few winemakers in my Wine group that uses Egg Whites.

None have any problem.
 
Egg doesn't stay in the wine. The egg settles with the fines and the wine is racked off.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top