Siligel down-side

[jtra]

Hello all,


I have a few Siligel and Liquigel questions.


1) Recently, I helped a friend bottle a couple Mosti wines (Barolo and Australian Chard). The barolo tasted ok, but I kept picking up what seemed to me a detergent-like scent. I'm trying to figure out what it could be and whether there's anything to do about it. Yesterday, I racked and fined a Mosti kit of my own. I smelled the Siligel and I think that's the scent I was picking up in my friend's wine. What off-scents might the fining agents cause, and under what conditions do they cause a problem, and is there anything you can do to fix it?


2) When fining my own kit yesterday, which so far is surprisingly good(Vinifera Noble, Bourg Royal White), I added the Siligel and stirred. It seemed very foamy. Is that normal?(I had already degassed and the wine was not at all foamy before adding the Siligel.) If it is normal, how aggressively should the Siligel (and then Liquigel) be stirred?


3) For kits that have been bulk-aged and that seem very clear, is there any reason to use the fining agents supplied with the kit? And for dry wines, is there any reason to use the sorbate? I have, for example, an AllJuice Sauvignon Blanc that has been bulk aging for about 4 months. It is crystal clear (I can read right through the full carboy) and very dry. Should I bother with fining or sorbate? (I'll add more kmeta before bottling.)


Appreciate any input at all.
Thanks

 

[Wade E]

If its clear why fine it, fining agents are for people who need that carboy faster or want to bottle the wine faster, Ive only used the siligel/liquigel once and really didnt notice so I cant help you there. You can skip the sorbate if the sg is down around .995 and you dont plan on sweetening.

 

[K&GB]

I agree with Wade. I used the siligel/liquigel combo on my MM All Juice Reisling and never noticed anything negative. Excellent wine. But I'm not using it on my Gewurtz because it's already clear after a couple of months. I'm also leaving the sorbate out of kits that I don't plan to back-sweeten. The Gewurtz came with a conditioner, so I did add sorbate to that one. But not to any of my reds. Edited by: K&GB

 

[Bartman]

What I have read about the various fining and clarifying agents online (mostly Wikipedia) leads me to believe they are not necessary to make a good wine, and may even be counterproductive to producing a great wine. The various methods by which the fining agents work (including Bentonite, isinglass, etc.) is fascinating and takes me back to high school chemistry class - remembering how precipitates are formed out of a solution and the processes used to selectively remove a particular component in a colloidal mixture.
The benefits of using them to fine and clarify wine is obvious if you are a manufacturer of kits to amateur winemakers who have unreasonably high expectations from the outset, especially if they are not very experienced with the nuances of different wines and the grapes that make them. Even experienced wine drinkers will assume a crystal clear wine will always be better than a slightly cloudy one, because most folks don't know or care to know about how wine is made (or any other consumer product).
The general downside to the fining agents, however, is that they remove some of the "good" stuff that makes wine interesting and each batch (or even bottle) unique - they each seem to remove some of the complexities from most wines. Wine was satisfactorily made for many generations without most (if not all) of those "helper" ingredients, except where they were naturally occurring (and got into the wine by accident).
I doubt that the well-known and respected "Old world" wineries and vineyards use those agents, although it is unlikely that they would ever describe exactly how they make their wines, just like Coca-cola won't share its recipe (understandably). In contrast, the big volume producers in California, Australia, etc. have a harder time concealing that information completely (from regulators, inspectors, etc.), so we know they do use a number of agents and additives to speed the the product to market and to adjust the taste and look of the wines to satisfy public expectations, even if the raw grape quality varies substantially from year to year.
I have talked to George about this issue before (when I inadvertently left something out), and have done some research to learn about the purposes and effects of using the fining agents. I now leave out virtually all of those agents included in the kits, but, of course, I wouldn't fault the manufacturer if the wine turned out poorly. I have not yet experimented with omitting the Bentonite, but I plan to do so soon.
I suppose that is one of the benefits of making your own wine - you don't have to satisfy a harsh marketplace in order to make a living with your product. Even if the audience is more critical.

Bart Reeder
Dallas, TX</font>
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[PolishWineP]

This is the great thing about making your own wine, you mostly control the outcome. Because I'm part of a wine making team, I do have to take someone else's opinion into consideration. That said, I did this fall bottle my celery wine cloudy. I used some clearing agents, but it wouldn't clear. I like the taste, and really, I made it for me. Because we do give away a lot of wines we want them to look nice. We don't want someone put off because it's cloudy. We're more concerned with this in whites than reds.