Bottle Sediment

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Drez

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I know bottle sediment is somewhat normal but are there ways to further reduce it? For now I've been primarily useing kits and so Im already useing Chitosan/Sparkloid.

I don't want to waste but am I picking up too much of the dediment at racking fro primary to secondary or from secondary to bottle?

Should I perhaps bulk age longer?

Otherwise been happy with the way wine had turned out thus far
Thanks!
 
I would recomend to bulk age longer. I rarely bottle earlier than 6 months unless I have a carboy crisis and almost never end up with any sediment in bottles. If you are looking for a quicker solution, I'm sure someone else will have better advice.
 
Racking from primary to secondary shouldn't be your problem; any extra picked up would be eliminated at the next racking. On a properly made kit, I normally don't get sediment in the bottle, but here are a few tricks you can try:
1. Make sure your wine is really well degassed. Gassy wine will often keep particles suspended.
2. Wait longer after adding your fining agents. Normal wait time is around a week or so, but it won't hurt to leave your wine for a month or two.
3. After the wine is starting to look clear, check the sides of your glass carboy. Sometimes a little bit of sediment will stick to the sides of the glass and it will then fall as you rack before bottling. It'll often get sucked up by the racking cane. If you see you have sediment hanging on the sides of the carboy, give your carboy a sharp twist to dislodge this sediment allowing it to fall and settle at the bottom.
4. Make sure your carboy is in it's final position prior to your final rack. For instance, you can't move it from the floor to a table before racking because you'll distrub the sediment.
5. Rack really carefully. Leave a little extra at the bottom of the carboy if you need to (the wine left in the carboy can be put into a smaller bottle and allowed to settle again whereby you can rack the clear wine of the top.
6. You can also do more than one racking before bottling. After it's clear, you can rack and then let it settle again for a couple months and then rack again before bottling.
7. You can run your wine through a filter (Bon Vino Mini Jet is one example of a home winemaker filtering system).
Good luck, enjoy.
 
Thank you, that was extremely helpful, exactly what I was looking for! I will employ these tactics!
 

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