eclecticperson

Recipes 

I have been making homemade wine for about 3 years. About 1.5 years ago I made 2 flower (white and purple lilac), 2 fruit (strawberry and grapefruit) and 1 vegetable (spiced pumpkin) which I have been unable to finish. All wines required the use of Sparkolloid and were very clear after this treatment. However, once I stabilized and sweetened these wines (the flower in June 2007 and the other 3 in October 2007) they turned cloudy. They remain so today.

I have 2 questions:

I used both wine conditioner and stabilizer when sweetening these wines. Did I use too much stabilizer and that is the reason for the cloudiness?

Is there a way to salvage these wines by using another fining agent or some other process? The white lilac was a very good wine before I sweetened it and I would like to save it if possible.

EclecticPerson

Yooper

Recipes 

Welcome to HBT!

As far as too much stabilizer, if you used wine conditioner and sorbate both, you probably over sorbated. The wine conditioner contains sweetners and stabilizers in it. If you didn't use sorbate, but campden, you should be ok. Excess sulfite will just disapate with time. As for too much sorbate, you probably couldn't taste anyway. What sort of stabilizing did you do before you added the wine conditioner?

As far as the cloudiness, you could always use finings again. I'd be a little concerned that over-fining could strip some of the delicate flavor from the flower wines, so before I would do that, I would crash cool it first. Get it as cold as you can (without freezing!) for two weeks. That might clear it up.

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magickbottle

Recipes 

i have had horible luck with additives. dont add stabelizer. just campden.

pectin enzyme is a joke - dont use it! it defintely clears fruit wine fast but it can ruin a batch just as easily. infact the only thing i changed in my recent 2 batches was i started useing pectin enzyme and it botched both batches. fruit. sugar. water.

rack it every 3 weeks for a few months. i used finning agents in some applewine and its hazier than it was before and refuses to clear.
i had a batch of apelwine clear in the primary and this stuff has been racked 4 times and is barely translucent now.

additives are bad.