Clearing sparkling wine, Alternative methods?

[JDesCotes]

I've done a couple of attempts at sparkling wine in 2L pop bottles and they are always a HUGE success. Some of them are so dry and so effervescent that they literally turn into clouds in your mouth and leave your mouth perfectly dry when swallowed... Never experienced a sparkling beverage anything like it before and I'm hooked pretty bad.

My only concern with my sparkling wines is how to clear it properly so that it has that "wow" factor when presented in a glass (I don't mind drinking it cloudy personally...). I've done some research into doing it the traditional way with rotating and recapping bottles to "blow out" the sediment but that seems like the effort is not worth the final result...

I normally make a variant of skeeter pee as my base and add flavouring and concentrates at bottling time to add flavour and sugar to recarbonate in the bottle.

I had a couple of thoughts on how to clear in alternative ways:

1. Would Irish Moss work the same way that it does for beer if I add it in the last 15 minutes of my lemon/sugar boil off? I find Irish moss makes my beer crystal clear in as little as 2 weeks. Alternatively, could I just use sparkoloid?
2. I'm planning on racking the wine 2-3 times during active fermentation to remove the bulk of the lees.
3. Once my final racking is complete I am going to let it sit for an extended time (no meta added so yeast stays active) so that all small particles settle.

What are your thoughts on how to create a crystal clear sparkling wine?

 

[JohnT]

OK,

A couple of way to go here.

You could force carbonate (I am a big fan of this) the wine after it has been finished and clarified. This involves putting your wine into a corney keg, and pumping it up with CO2, then keeping it cold for a couple of weeks. Perfectly clear from the first glass to the last!

The other thing you could do is undergo disgorging. Get champagne bottles (which have a beer lip if you have no noticed) fill and cap when carbonating naturally. Allow the bottle to sit on its side for 2 to 18 months. Take each bottle and stack them so that they are "neck down". Every day for 3 weeks, give each bottle a shimmy-shake. This should get all of the yeast to the against the inside of your beer cap. Place each bottle into a chest freezer for 1 to 2 hours (until neck freezes). Invery the bottle and uncap. the yeast then shoots out. Top bottle off with still wine of the same vintage and insert champagne cork and wine.

did I mention that I am a big fan of forced carbonation???

 

[JDesCotes]

Really don't want to go the disgorging route. And the co2 route seems like it would increase the price per bottle and initial investment. I am going to look into forced carbonation though.

 

[JDesCotes]

Wow. Forced carbonation would cost over $100 to get all setup

 

[GreginND]

I've done some research into doing it the traditional way with rotating and recapping bottles to "blow out" the sediment but that seems like the effort is not worth the final result...

If you want clear sparkling wine without paying for equipment to do it otherwise, then it is worth the effort.

An alternative would be to use encapsulated yeasts. Do a google search on it and you will be able to find more information.