SuperKleer in order!

[Wade E]

This is a question that comes up here time after time and one a good friend of mine had to who is a teacher of wine making at a CT university so he emailed the company with the question below.

The question} Why do you have to add the
Kiesesol before the Chitosan? My students always ask that question. What
happens if they are reversed? the insertion time is so close, I cannot
see why this is critical

The answer} Yes,
there is a reason as to why the kieselsol is added prior to chitosan.
If the order is reversed, there can be clearing issues with the wine.
The reasoning is due to the electrical charge of the fining agents as
well as compounds that exist in the wine. Kieselsol, an inert silica
gel that is negatively charged, is added to the wine. This builds up a
strong static charge due to the dead and living yeast cells also having a
negative charge in the carboy of wine. Chitosan, a positively charged
polymer, is then added to the wine. The negatively charged yeast cells
and Kieselsol particles are instantly attracted to the positively
charged Chitosan particles to form heavy clumps that fall rapidly to the
bottom, leaving a clear wine. If the order is reversed the chitosan
will not function nearly as effectively at attracting
negatively charged particles, meaning that you could end up with hazy
wines. </span>

 

[ibglowin]

Makes sense! Sounds like the Kieselsol helps increase the total overall (negative) charge so that when you do add the Chitosan.......
Bam!

 

[Runningwolf]

Interesting, thanks for posting.

 

[cindyjo]

Fantastic !!! That makes sense. I always wondered about that but did not ask cause I figure I ask enough questions

 

[Car-Boy]

Thanks Wade for the explanation, but how important is it to wait the hour between putting in the each packet.

 

[ibglowin]

Very important. The Rxn is not instantaneous and needs time to complete before going on to the nest step.

 

[Bartman]

Mike,
the few times I have used kieselsol and chitosan (on white wines), I added them about 5-10 minutes apart and by the next day (sometimes wihtin a few hours) the whole carboy was crystal clear. Where did the hour delay come from - is that in some kit's instructions?

 

[ibglowin]

Yes, per directions in the CC kits you wait an hour. While Mosti has you dump one after the other basically. But we don't know exactly what fining agents Mosti uses exactly while we know CC uses Superkleer for sure.

 

[Wade E]

Mike, it basically is superkleer. As Im sure you know each ingredient can have about 4 names and in a thread that I wrote here and on the other forum called Understanding fining agents it lists a few names that each one of these has and they were the same.

 

[ibglowin]

Its all good, you can tell the CC pack is SuperKleer as its in the same exact package. MM uses those small white plastic mystery tubes.....
If it is the same stuff, CC is just being safe by asking you to wait which would allow the maximum time to react before adding the second fining agent.

 

[Wade E]

Yeah, Superkleer has changed their instructions also awhile back as they used to say to just add one right after another and now they state to wait.

 

[Runningwolf]

It was always an hour for me too, untill the last 5 kits I did and they all had you add five minutes apart from each other. One of the kits had you add #1 followed by #2 five minutes later and then another #1 five minutes after that. These were all RJS Port kits.