Filter or Not Filter?

[StreetGlide]

Does anyone filter their wine? Bottled 20 gals of Blueberry wine I made with a friend and he always filters. I love the way it cleaned up the wine, but is it at a cost? He said not when making wine from grapes, but I wasn’t sure about kit wine. Anyone have an answer?

 

[cmason1957]

Does anyone filter their wine? Bottled 20 gals of Blueberry wine I made with a friend and he always filters. I love the way it cleaned up the wine, but is it at a cost? He said not when making wine from grapes, but I wasn’t sure about kit wine. Anyone have an answer?

Filtering cannot remove taste or order molecules. They are at least an order of magnitude smaller than the tightest commercially available filter, unless you get really crazy, spend stupid amounts of money and try to filter to about .001 micron.

 

[Johnd]

If your wine is nice and clear already, there’s nothing wrong with running it through some polishing pads, it really brightens it up, I notice it particularly white wines. That said, I rarely filter reds, it’s just a personal preference.

 

[Rice_Guy]

* one question is about kits, this juice has been filtered before it ie processed in the vacuum evaporator. This will also be the case for frozen juice and any reconstituted juices.
* filters add a process step. I have 3, a bon vino, KLR and vinbrite. If I need to use a large 5 micron pad, I didn’t wait for it to settle or clarify or pectase enough.
* Filtering helps win at contest time note! I don’t bother filtering unless it is a show wine. Neighbors and cousins aren’t picky customers. I have done best of show without filtering, taste and aroma are more points so the fermentation/early is where I put the effort.
* Of the home filters I have tried, the bon vino is the favorite
* some things won’t filter, ex the pollen material (fat?) from dandelion wine or pectin from peach
* the main cost is the effort of adding another step/ set of equipment to sanitize/ void volume of wine to flush toss. Have never seen flavor stripping with fruit wines.