Is Clearing Necessary?

[jamesngalveston]

Excellent information, and just another reason to have a clear wine...

 

[midnightsolace]

That is indeed good to know.

 

[LAgreeneyes]

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.

Ok. I will do as you suggest and report back. Thanks for the homework assignment.

 

[LAgreeneyes]

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.

The wines I drink are sweet. I love VERY VERY VERY sweet wines. The sweeter the better.

 

[jamesngalveston]

Miss Green eyes..I started a 5 gallon batch of strawberry using 40 lbs of fruit, yesterday.
It will be in the 15 to 17 percent abv. I am fast tracking it like a db.
I am taking pics and labeling day1, 2, 3 until it is clear..I will then compile to a short video for you.
You will see, that you can get a high abv,sweet and clear wine in less then 3 weeks....

 

[Turock]

Then you should be clearing your wines first. The other reason to let a wine clear is to age the flavors. I'm sure your cloudy strawberry isn't as good on flavor as a mature strawberry. There is nothing more irritating to my palate than a young wine.

Sorbate is not capable of preventing refermentation in a cloudy wine. Secondary fermentation will be taking place at a slow rate. You may end up with corks blowing out unless you keep them refrigerated.

 

[LAgreeneyes]

Miss Green eyes..I started a 5 gallon batch of strawberry using 40 lbs of fruit, yesterday.
It will be in the 15 to 17 percent abv. I am fast tracking it like a db.
I am taking pics and labeling day1, 2, 3 until it is clear..I will then compile to a short video for you.
You will see, that you can get a high abv,sweet and clear wine in less then 3 weeks....

That is great!!!! Sounds exciting. If your way can do everything that I need in order to have a high ABV and still have a taste that is so sweet that I will need to make an appointment to the dentist because I have a cavity, then I'm in!! Lol. And to make it in 3 weeks, is even better. Heaven knows I have zero patience to wait years for it to age.

Thanks a bunch. I appreciate you doing that. I can't wait!!

 

[jamesngalveston]

for a high abv and clear wine, dragon blood can not be beat...hands down..and you can make it and bottle in 2 to 3 weeks...and mine is always at the high end of abv...back sweeten until its syrup if you want...

 

[LAgreeneyes]

for a high abv and clear wine, dragon blood can not be beat...hands down..and you can make it and bottle in 2 to 3 weeks...and mine is always at the high end of abv...back sweeten until its syrup if you want...

Ooooooo. My kinda wine. I have been lurking on that thread and am excited to try it. I have been putting off on trying the DB but I need to get that going. If it's as fast and as sweet as you say, then I reckon I need to hurry along and get that started. I like that comment about back sweeten until its syrup. Lol

 

[jamesngalveston]

do you speak french at all..

 

[LAgreeneyes]

do you speak french at all..

"Oui".

It was mandatory at our school growing up. In 1st grade is when started learning to speak French.

 

[chrisjw]

Sorbate is not capable of preventing refermentation in a cloudy wine. Secondary fermentation will be taking place at a slow rate. You may end up with corks blowing out unless you keep them refrigerated.

Can you provide more info (or a link) on why sorbate + kmeta will not prevent refermentation on a sweetened cloudy wine. Thanks.

 

[djrockinsteve]

Potassium Metabisulfite only stuns a yeast thus allowing your commercial yeast to gain a foothold on the fermentation process. Too many people believe that K-Meta is a sanitizer when in fact it is not.

Potassium Sorbate prevents yeast from reproducing but will not stop fermentation by any then living yeast organisms.

Sorbate clings to the yeasts preventing them from breeding. At the dose of 1/2 teaspoon per gallon of wine yeasts may continue to feed upon any sugars currently in their environment but will not be able to continue to reproduce.

This is why we rack off of the sediment (living and dead yeasts and other stuff). We clear to also help remove as much of any living yeasts in suspension then rack again.

Aging with a high ABV and a lack of food creates a horrible environment for the yeast. In the event any yeast manage to hybernate and survive when and if you back sweeten sorbate is added to prevent or actually inhibit refermentation when sugar (food) is added.

This is why after you back sweeten you should wait a few weeks to a month before bottling to be able to see if a refermentation is taking place. Rushing usually leads to corks popping.

If your wine is cloudy it most likely still contains sediment which most likely will include left over yeasts. By adding sugar it very likely will start to ferment again.

 

[Bartman]

I wondered the same thing - how does sorbate work in cleared wine but not in cloudy wine? Hard to find any scientific analysis, but several sources tracked what djrockinsteve said. The cloudiness typically harbors yeast (both live and dead) that can continue to survive and ferment wine without reproducing. Cleared wine almost certainly has far less live yeast that can ferment sugars into alcohol. So that makes sense to me.

 

[midnightsolace]

Very informative, and good info to know... Saving it, myself!

 

[chrisjw]

djrockinsteve, thanks for the explanation.

So if one wanted to sweeten a cloudy wine (with a fermentable sugar) and keep it cloudy (without adding add'l alcohol to kill the yeast) the wine should be pasteurized. However, using a non-fermentable sweetener to sweeten a cloudy wine, without clarifying it, would be an easier solution.

 

[Wiz]

I like to think I make a wine to the best of my ability. Therefore, I use bentonite, several rackings and filter before bottling.

 

[SpoiledRotten]

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.

And here is some of my strawberry. It just looks more inviting to me. Some really give a weird look when I ask them if they would like to try some of my homemade wine, mainly because they have most likely been offered some that looks like a smoothy rather than a glass of wine.



This was racked again after this, but not filtered. I have yet to filter any of my wine.

 

[Julie]

SpoiledRotten, haven't seen you on here for awhile. Loved your comment.

 

[spaniel]

I use the least amount of bentonite that I feel will clear the wine. Why not something else? Because I use what I have a lot of experience with and am proficient with...no other reason.

If you plan on entering a wine competition, a cloudy wine will automatically give you a low score. I imagine if it is bad enough, the judge won't want to try it.

You can (usually) avoid any clearing agents if you are willing to let your wine sit long enough. We had a batch of apple once that nothing would clear, but a couple years or so sitting in the carbouy off in the corner cleared it pristinely. But I need my carbouys back before the next season, so I need to bottle...so I use bentonite.

If you bottle cloudy wine and do not drink it very young, you will have sediment in the bottle. Most simply don't find it attractive, its effect on taste can be argued.

In recent years I have had access to something I made wine a decade without...cold stabilization. I am now a huge fan. My neighbor sold me his old kegerator for $100, it now serves multiple purposes depending on the time of year. Last week I found a working refrigerator on Craiglist locally for $50....I need to clean it and build a shelving system strong enough, and I should be able to get 3-4 carbouys in it this fall.