Wine filters - is it worth it, and where can I get them?

[NickW]

Hey guys,

Hope all is good!

My red wine is fermenting away nicely, a good 3 weeks or so yet before its ready for bottling.

I'm just wondering, in the kit instructions it's telling me that it's extremely beneficial to use a "wine filter" when syphoning the wine off into bottles/ wine box.

What exactly is this, and where can I get one/some filters?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Cheers guys : ,

crE

 

[NickW]

Is it something like this: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... c2ffcdb4c9 ?

:shock:

 

[BrewStew]

i've always thought wine filters were just a piece of cleverly woven material in a disc shape that you fold and put in a funnel?

 

[Aleman]

I've used a variety of wine filters, and to be totally honest the only sort I would ever consider using would be a Buon Vino Minijet available from all good homebrew stores or eBay. Ok they are not cheap but they do the job really well, and in reasonable time. The other filters I've had have required hours to filter a gallon, and the vinamat ones which use what looks like a garden sprayer to pump the wine through are a PITA to clean and sterilse.

Another thought would be to use a corny to store the 'cloudy' wine, then push (with CO2) the wine through a 10" filter fitted with a 1 micron (absolute) spun polyprop filter cartridge Like This one to another corny.

Most wine will clear on its own given time . . . . . . but for that final polish you just cannot beat a filter

 

[percival]

i've never done a kit wine, so my comment may not be relevant. I understand that filtering can remove some of the flavour bearing molecules from your wine, not in any major way but subtly so (you could lose bad or good flavours). Its great to have a crystal clear product ( i love it!) but if you can barely detect a haze in a demijohn, then in a bottle it'll be gone and in a glass no chance. Its a question of preferences i suppose. Weighing up whether the cost and time and potential small loss of some flavour for that uber clarity. As has been said above most wine will clear given time too.

 

[NickW]

How long do you reckon the average red wine would need to clear?

 

[NickW]

Eeeep!

Just noticed the £145 price tag on that mini jet - although probably very good.. I'm not financially prepared to throw that much money at it just yet!

 

[percival]

again bear in mind i'm not a kit brewer, my wines clear usually within a month or two of when fermenting stops. sometimes (as with the 'sake') it was within days and crystal clear in a couple of weeks. Sometimes they take longer. my blackberry took about 1-2 months. Regardless of how fast they clear they really benefit from time, give them 6 months or so (from start), longer if you can wait longer (yep thats a toughie!) and you won't regret it. Let them condition in demijohns rather than bottles (unless you need the demijohns for your next brew of course!). i don't pay too much attention to how long they take to clear as i'm not in the habit of rushing to drink any of them. i would not expect a kit to take any longer to clear as the ingredients are much more controlled, but don't worry if its a bit slow.

 

[NickW]

Great answer :)

This kit uses finings anyway - that usually clears the wine? Or am I getting confused?

If finings do clear the wine - what possible other reason would there be to filter it? :hmm:

 

[Aleman]

Yes the minijet is a tad expensive, but it does the job incredibly well . . . well enough to deal with the higher yeast load in beer . . . . Not that I would know anything about that :whistle:

I've had wines completely refuse to clear even with finings, but generally kit wines clear well with no problems . . . . although I have some Damson wine that has been in Demijohn for a good few years that is still throwing a sediment . . . . a filter would sort that out without a problem.

 

[percival]

many years ago in my kit beer brewing days i used finings for a while to clear my beer. but i found that even they were not necessary, again i just trusted in time. I have only ever tried using finings with banana wine, and i didnt work, neither did time, and i eventually i had to give it away cos i moved house. My latest batch of orange wine has a very slight haze (cant notice it in a bottle tho). i really don't think its worth tinkering with that because it doesnt affect the flavour at all. The orange wine haze will be due to pectin, which won't be a problem with your wine kit. Chances are that simply moving the wine to a cool place after racking it will 'shock' the suspended stuff into dropping out. Using finings shouldn't do any harm, it may speed up the process too, and its also cheap so even it you don't need to use them it won't break the bank!

it is possibly the problem with the damson wine tho, tho i wouldn't expect pectin hazes to keep throwing sediments after 2 years. The often mentioned (by me) Berry details a method of dealing with a pectin haze using enzymes as a cure, rather than prevention. Again i wouldn't bother with it, if i was sure it was pectin, i would just accept it wouldn't be a show winner and enjoy glugging it anyway :

 

[NickW]

Can wine clear in bottles just as easily in a demijohn? Or would that just create sediment at the bottom of the bottle?

 

[NickW]

Oh just found a link to the instructions! http://www.eckraus.com/wine-making-conn ... tions.html

It says to add finings and leave for about 6 days for clearing. So that will do the job.

Perhaps the filtering it recommends is simply for the "final touch" perhaps.

Who knows!

 

[percival]

call me a cynic .... perhaps the kit makers also sell filters

A touch more seriously tho ... it really only depends on how serious you want to get about your brewing and how much cash you have to spare on your hobby. There's plenty of brewers who enter competitions and for them everything they can lay their hands on to improve their brews will be worth it. And there's also plenty who are just 'bonkers' about quality in every department. (in the same way as i'm quite bonkers about making cheapo wine .... recycling bottles rather than buying them, picking fruit etc etc). There's probably also plenty who just love the chemistry of the whole thing, and adding more chemists tool and techniques gives them a buzz. time also affect brewers, i find myself using things these days that i never bothered with before, pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient, citric acid for example. because i make more than i did in years gone by, rather than avoiding recipes because i didnt have the ingredients (and confidence) needed.

 

[percival]

regarding clearing wine in bottles. i wouldn't recommend this simply because you'll get bored with racking from bottle to bottle. And you'll also lose more wine from racking 6 times while avoiding the sediment, rather than once from a demijohn. i don't know whether i'm right or not but conditioning and clearing are to me different things, tho i wouldn't argue with anyone that says they are two ends of the same spectrum. Conditioning starts when clearing has finished, or all but finished.