Floating sediment in banana wine

[Alixandra Cadden-Young]

Hi,
I’m pretty new to winemaking and have followed a recipe for banana wine. I fermented it with the bananas in it for a week and then strained it into the Demi-johns. I racked it off a couple of weeks ago and strained at the same time but now each of the 3 jars has white floating sediment which sinks then rises again. Any ideas of what it is or how to get rid of it?
Many thanks

 

[jgmillr1]

Looks like a case of protein coagulation. Bananas seem to have about twice the amount of protein than grapes (according to wikipedia at least). It could also be a nasty pectin haze, but you probably added pectic enzyme with your recipe that should have largely addressed that during fermentation and I don't think pectin forms cloudy lumps like that. So, try fining the wine with bentonite at the higher end of the dosing range (~1.5g/L). Once it settles out, you will want to rack it and fine with chitosan to further clarify the wine.

 

[Alixandra Cadden-Young]

Thanks, I’ll try those things and I’ve also bought a better filtering kit to see if that helps.

 

[jgmillr1]

Next time you can add the bentonite once the fermentation just starts. It will be circulated over and over in your fermentation vessel by the yeast evolving CO2 and do a fantastic job fining out protein.

Filtering will not prevent this from happening but it may remove it once it is completely formed, provided your filter medium is fine enough.

Be careful to keep your sulfite levels up and not to oxidize your wine.