Is Clearing Necessary?

[LAgreeneyes]

Why is it necessary to "clear" your wine? Does clearing affect the taste?

 

[djrockinsteve]

I think not many would like to drink let alone look at a cloudy wine. It contains sediment from the grapes and fermentation process.

 

[LonelyMassachusetts]

Many home winemakers believe that using products like Sparkolloid or filtering is the final step to making a polished wine. This step includes cold stabilizing the wine to get rid of the tartrate crystals. Overall, its purpose is to remove as much suspended sediment as possible- even the particles you can't see. However others believe that simply aging the wine in carboys for a long period has the same result. Either way, extended aging, clearing, and filtering all work towards minimizing the lees dropped in the bottle.
Common filtering, fining, and aging techniques shouldn't affect the taste of wine. However it's feared that clearing excessively with superfine filters or harsh clearing agents will leave the wine stripped of color and/or flavor.
There is a notable exception with egg whites, which are used to strip excessive tannins to smooth out the taste.

 

[chrisjw]

It depends what kind of wine you are making. I like to clear grape-based wines (but my reds are age-cleared) for taste and looks. I made the Full Hard Lemonade (malt version) and I preferred it cloudy for the taste and looks. It looked like Mike's Hard Lemonade.

 

[LAgreeneyes]

Did this strawberry wine need clearing?

Opinions.

It was soooooooooooooo good too. Everyone who got a free bottle loved it. I made this wine before I joined this forum, so I didn't know anything about clearing.

To be honest, I kinda like the "cloudy" colorful look. But then again, I"m not a wine expert but I'm an expert when it comes to what I like taste. Always drinking a wine that has no color sounds boring to me but that's just my opinion. In my own deranged thinking, I would WANT the wine that I drink to look like whatever color fruit that it is. So, I would want my red grape wine to be red, watermelon to be red, etc. etc. etc. But that's just me.

 

[jswordy]

No, it is not necessary to clear wines, but they will self-clear in the bottle anyway. So the idea is to let them do as much of that as they can (or force them to do it) before bottling.

When I lived in Illinois, I knew a guy who made lots of great wine by straining it at the end of the ferment once stable and bottling right away. When he gave it away, he would tell people to set the bottle upright a day and not to drink the last inch (similar to what people do with a bottle-carbonated homebrew).

People are used to commercial wines that are super-filtered and processed, so they get squeamish if a wine is cloudy or has particulates or wine diamonds. Neither affects the quality of the wine. But clear and heat and cold stabilized are what we are used to in the store, so that is what many home winemakers do, to the extent of buying their own filtering systems.

Personally, I allow mine to settle out in aging and racking but I do not filter. I believe filtering does decrease flavor and color structure. The best blueberry wine I ever had came out of the bottom of a carboy. The dregs were allowed to settle in a wine bottle and a thick wine floated up. It had tons of flavor, all the heavier flavor elements that had settled out of the cleared blueberry wine by gravity.

 

[LAgreeneyes]

No, it is not necessary to clear wines, but they will self-clear in the bottle anyway. So the idea is to let them do as much of that as they can (or force them to do it) before bottling.

When I lived in Illinois, I knew a guy who made lots of great wine by straining it at the end of the ferment once stable and bottling right away. When he gave it away, he would tell people to set the bottle upright a day and not to drink the last inch (similar to what people do with a bottle-carbonated homebrew).

People are used to commercial wines that are super-filtered and processed, so they get squeamish if a wine is cloudy or has particulates or wine diamonds. Neither affects the quality of the wine. But clear and heat and cold stabilized are what we are used to in the store, so that is what many home winemakers do, to the extent of buying their own filtering systems.

Personally, I allow mine to settle out in aging and racking but I do not filter. I believe filtering does decrease flavor and color structure. The best blueberry wine I ever had came out of the bottom of a carboy. The dregs were allowed to settle in a wine bottle and a thick wine floated up. It had tons of flavor, all the heavier flavor elements that had settled out of the cleared blueberry wine by gravity.

Great explanation.

I really don't see clearing my future then.

 

[DoctorCAD]

Did this strawberry wine need clearing?

Opinions.

It was soooooooooooooo good too. Everyone who got a free bottle loved it. I made this wine before I joined this forum, so I didn't know anything about clearing.

To be honest, I kinda like the "cloudy" colorful look. But then again, I"m not a wine expert but I'm an expert when it comes to what I like taste. Always drinking a wine that has no color sounds boring to me but that's just my opinion. In my own deranged thinking, I would WANT the wine that I drink to look like whatever color fruit that it is. So, I would want my red grape wine to be red, watermelon to be red, etc. etc. etc. But that's just me.

Clearing a wine has little to do with making a wine with no color. All clearing is intended to do is get dead yeast, micro-bits of pulp and other solids to fall out of the wine.

And, YES, that needs cleared up. I'd bet you can taste the dead yeast from across the room.

 

[LAgreeneyes]

Clearing a wine has little to do with making a wine with no color. All clearing is intended to do is get dead yeast, micro-bits of pulp and other solids to fall out of the wine.

And, YES, that needs cleared up. I'd bet you can taste the dead yeast from across the room.

I didn't taste any yeast. It was perfect for ME!

 

[jswordy]

I didn't taste any yeast. It was perfect for ME!

Then it's perfect.

 

[Bartman]

Perhaps the terminology is a little bit of the problem: "clearing" does not mean taking away all the color, so any wine looks like water or vodka afterwards. A better word would be "clarifying" because it is intended to remove the cloudiness from wine that is typically, but not always, a result of insufficient time after fermenting. One reason we ruse 'wine yeast' rather than baking or bread yeast, or other kinds of yeast, is because wine yeast will flocculate, which means to clump together and fall out of suspension after the yeast has finished and died, more readily than other yeasts.

Even so, wine yeast will cloud your wine until you either use a clarifying agent, filter, or let enough time pass that all the visible cloudiness has settled out (I do the last of those). When I made Joe's Ancient Orange Mead, I used the prescribed bread yeast, and it never did get clear. Tasted fine though.

So is "clearing" necessary? Not really, but if you tasted freshly fermented wine that was not filtered, I bet you would taste the yeast. On the other hand, after 1-2 months of sitting that same wine might still be somewhat cloudy, but I doubt highly that you would taste any yeast (unless you stirred it up, which is sometimes done purposely in battonage, but that's another thread...).

 

[BernardSmith]

For what it's worth I think you can feel the sediment in wines on your tongue and in your mouth. In my opinion it does not add anything to the experience. Quite the opposite. It's a bit like eating a salad when the fruit and vegetables have not been properly washed. You can taste the grit. The thing that makes what could be a transparent liquid (albeit a colored liquid) opaque or translucent are the particles of dead yeast and fruit. Clarifying the wine results in those particles falling out of the wine and then being removed before bottling. If you and your friends like opaque or translucent wine, that's fine but most folk seem to prefer transparent wines whose clarity enhances - and does not diminish - the color and taste of the wine. The opaque nature of the wine in the glass you photographed does not really suggest the color of freshly picked ripe strawberries, at least not the strawberries we can grow and eat in this part of New York State.

 

[jamesngalveston]

I agree with doctor cad, and jswordy...
You say you want the wine to look like the fruit...I have never seen a pink strawberry, Now if you would have let that clear, it would have looked a lot like a strawberry color for sure...

If you ever make a wine, and you let it clear, are add a clearing agent, you will be amazed at the difference.
I think a clear wine is an indication of how much effort you want to put forth in making something as well as one can...
I would not want to sit down and eat rice and gravy with lumpy gravy, but thats just me...

 

[midnightsolace]

If I were making a grape wine, I'd go for a very clean looking wine. Your strawberry wine pictures, on the other hand, look tasty! I think at that point it's going to be totally your call. As an example, I love pearl sake (unfiltered, looks like iridescent coconut milk) and my girlfriend loves the filtered diamond sake. The tastes are different, but I confess I don't know much of anything about making sake. All I know is that our differences are purely due to taste. It's the same with beer. A super filtered beer just doesn't taste right to me, and I know I'm rarely the norm on this one, but a good, fat Guinness is right up my alley.

The main reason why I prefer a clarified grape wine is because that's what I was raised on, and so that's what I'm used to. =) But, truly, your strawberry wine looks pretty awesome at least from the photos, and if you enjoy the taste, then you have yourself a good recipe for your wine.

 

[LAgreeneyes]

Thanks for all of the replies. I think I'll stick to no clearing.

 

[GaDawg]

I can see clearly now

 

[jamesngalveston]

LOL, Gadawg...not looking through here wine....but good song, none the less...if it taste good, drink it....period, as long as it is not beet...

 

[derunner]

I've had some commercial Tempranillo that was murky. Tasted great. Is that murkiness expected in some wines?

 

[chrisjw]

LA, You have already done a visual test now why not do a taste test. Its pretty easy to clarify a very small amount of your wine and then do a blind taste test to see if there is any difference in taste. Just a thought and if you do it, please report back your findings.

 

[Turock]

Are you drinking these wines dry? The problem with cloudy wine is if you're going to sweeten and use sorbate, the sorbate will not work because too many yeast cells are remaining. Sorbate only works in wine that has been cleared of as many yeast cells as possible.