# Egg shells for clearing



## Julie (Mar 28, 2010)

I read in a book over the weekend that you can take an egg shell, place it the in the oven for a few seconds to dry out and then add it to your wine to clear it. 

Has anyone heard of this or done this, if so did it work? Another question if this does help in clearing your wine it is a certain type of haze, i.e. protein, starch or enzyme?

Thanks.


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## Runningwolf (Mar 28, 2010)

Jack Keller has a post on using egg whites and shells.. http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/finishin.asp


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## Wade E (Mar 28, 2010)

Yes, you dry the shells, cook them in an oven and then grind them into a very fine powder. I have never done so. Egg whites will remove a lot of tannins so is good if you left your grapes on the skins and seeds to long and extracted to much astringent tannins or just to mellow out a wine.


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## Tom (Mar 28, 2010)

interesting.. I just knew about egg whites. What does the shell do? I'm guessing its the calcium in it that does something?


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## AlFulchino (Mar 28, 2010)

Tom, i wonder if it acts like Chitosin...which is a sea shell product


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## Tom (Mar 28, 2010)

Al,
live and learn we ALL can get something new here.


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## AlFulchino (Mar 28, 2010)

count me in that learning group Tom


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## Wade E (Mar 28, 2010)

These egg shells are mainly used to remove or decolorize a wine like a white wine that has an off color. It will work as a fining agent though but not its main job.


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## Luc (Apr 1, 2010)

I never use any clearing agents at all.

However I had a wine that really had difficulties clearing so I tried the egg shelves. It did not work. That can however be due to the kind of wine.

I did however notice something else that might interest you.

Egg shelves are made (of course) out of chalk. So the shelves reacted with the acid in the wine. That really was predictable.
It left a solid sediment.

However the bad part was that the wine had lost acidity so I had to add acid to make it vivid again.

I thought it would be a nice story for my web-log. But I guess that will be a long-term plan as I have to do more tests with this.

How about this: in the old days, and in some recipes I found that they used to use wheat as a clearing agent. Another long-term experiment......

Luc


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