Pectic Haze?

[Rice_Guy]

Does it need to be denatured alcohol? Would Everclear work?

Pectin is not soluble in all alcohol. ,,, Everclear would pull pectin out. There should be some effect due to percentage of alcohol/ rate that the alcohol develops or gets poured into the solution. ie you might not form the clot structure by adding more ethanol to a wine.

 

[winemanden]

Pectic enzyme is cheap enough. Bung some in at the start, it doesn't hurt.

 

[wood1954]

I'm reading a history book of wine, and it stated that we'd not recognize wine from the Roman era as wine, much less as being drinkable.

I made wine for decades without doing any acid testing, and a few years back I started using test strips. About 1.5 years ago I purchased a mid-range pH tester (about $75 USD at that time), and I do find it useful.

Pre-fermentation it's good to know the pH. I need to read up on how to use the meter to determine TA, which is a more useful number. I have an acid titration kit, but totally suck at using it.

Post-fermentation, I do all acid adjustments by taste. My (tongue-in-cheek) comment is that the pH tester won't drink the wine, so I don't care what it's opinion is.

Also, I keep in mind something I read: The enemy of Good is not Bad. The true enemy is Better.

In that vein I don't chase perfect numbers, and I don't tinker and re-tinker with the wine to make it better. I adjust things (or not) until I like it, then I bottle and do not second guess my decision.

Acid titration is really easy with a ph meter. Put 15 ml of wine in a small container so you can get a ph reading. Then add the sodium hydroxide cc by cc until your ph meter reads 8.2., depending on the strength of your sodium hydroxide do the math. If you use a solution of .067? your TA is equal to the number of ccs you added. The sodium hydroxide is sold at a lot of online winemaking supply stores.

 

[Jusatele]

I do a lot of fruit wines
and yes some fruit wines have a lot of pectin, strawberry can be huge.
I have some advice that can help; first, use pectin destroying enzyme in fermentation, that way it drops early, if you still have haze and suspect pectin, add more enzyme, it does not effect taste or %. and finally, aging promotes clarity as it will settle.
and finally, keep accurate notes. you see experience is the best and notes confirm experience.