clearing agent

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kmdakota1

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In about 10 days I will be racking my strawberry wine where it will sit for about 2 months to age. It has been in the secondary for almost 45 days. It has a lot of sediment and has cleared pretty nicely but there is still some sediment in suspension that you can see just hovering in the wine. Will this fall out or will i have to add some sort of clearing agent? If so, when should I add the clearing agent and how long should i wait to rack again? should i stabilize when i add the clearing agent or wait till right before bottling. Also, how long should you age in bottles? I primarily only try fruit wines. Just a quick note, i've only ever worked with concentrates before and never had to deal with all the sediment from using real fruit so any help would be appreciated. thanks
 
Did you add pectin enzyme? This would clear any haziness caused by pectin in the fruit.

Mine cleared up nicely on it's own at about 2 months after in the secondary.

I've also used "Super Cleen" fining agent for a white wine that really cleared it up.
 
i did use pectic enzyme in the beginning. this looks like little pieces of pulp from the strawberries and not so much a haze. It's been in secondary for about 35 days. should i leave longer? there's quite a bit of lees and sediment in there, what about aftertaste? Or should i just rack and wait another 2 months?
 
i did use pectic enzyme in the beginning. this looks like little pieces of pulp from the strawberries and not so much a haze. It's been in secondary for about 35 days. should i leave longer? there's quite a bit of lees and sediment in there, what about aftertaste? Or should i just rack and wait another 2 months?

Let it sit at least 60 days after the next racking, and then rack and let it sit. It'll clear on its own in a reasonable amount of time. You can also drop the temperature 10 degrees, and it'll clear in about 24 hours.
 
If you have fruit pulp still floating in suspension you would want to consider racking thru a fine mesh that would capture this floating sediment. If it is fruit pulp it can cause off-flavors at this point. You are 45 days in secondary, you can safely rack at this point and then get on an every 60 days racking schedule until the wine is no longer dropping sediment and it should hopefully be clear at that point.
 
If you have fruit pulp still floating in suspension you would want to consider racking thru a fine mesh that would capture this floating sediment. If it is fruit pulp it can cause off-flavors at this point. You are 45 days in secondary, you can safely rack at this point and then get on an every 60 days racking schedule until the wine is no longer dropping sediment and it should hopefully be clear at that point.

I definitely would not recommend racking through anything, especially mesh. That would risk oxidation, and ruin the wine. A few pieces of floating fruit pulp won't harm the wine, and it can easily wait until 45-60 days before racking with stuff like that floating.
 
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