# Is Clearing Necessary?



## LAgreeneyes (Aug 16, 2013)

Why is it necessary to "clear" your wine? Does clearing affect the taste?


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## djrockinsteve (Aug 16, 2013)

I think not many would like to drink let alone look at a cloudy wine. It contains sediment from the grapes and fermentation process.


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## LonelyMassachusetts (Aug 16, 2013)

Many home winemakers believe that using products like Sparkolloid or filtering is the final step to making a polished wine. This step includes cold stabilizing the wine to get rid of the tartrate crystals. Overall, its purpose is to remove as much suspended sediment as possible- even the particles you can't see. However others believe that simply aging the wine in carboys for a long period has the same result. Either way, extended aging, clearing, and filtering all work towards minimizing the lees dropped in the bottle.
Common filtering, fining, and aging techniques shouldn't affect the taste of wine. However it's feared that clearing excessively with superfine filters or harsh clearing agents will leave the wine stripped of color and/or flavor.
There is a notable exception with egg whites, which are used to strip excessive tannins to smooth out the taste.


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## chrisjw (Aug 16, 2013)

It depends what kind of wine you are making. I like to clear grape-based wines (but my reds are age-cleared) for taste and looks. I made the Full Hard Lemonade (malt version) and I preferred it cloudy for the taste and looks. It looked like Mike's Hard Lemonade.


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## LAgreeneyes (Aug 16, 2013)

Did this strawberry wine need clearing?

Opinions.

It was soooooooooooooo good too. Everyone who got a free bottle loved it. I made this wine before I joined this forum, so I didn't know anything about clearing.

To be honest, I kinda like the "cloudy" colorful look. But then again, I"m not a wine expert but I'm an expert when it comes to what I like taste. Always drinking a wine that has no color sounds boring to me but that's just my opinion. In my own deranged thinking, I would WANT the wine that I drink to look like whatever color fruit that it is. So, I would want my red grape wine to be red, watermelon to be red, etc. etc. etc. But that's just me.


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## jswordy (Aug 16, 2013)

No, it is not necessary to clear wines, but they will self-clear in the bottle anyway. So the idea is to let them do as much of that as they can (or force them to do it) before bottling.

When I lived in Illinois, I knew a guy who made lots of great wine by straining it at the end of the ferment once stable and bottling right away. When he gave it away, he would tell people to set the bottle upright a day and not to drink the last inch (similar to what people do with a bottle-carbonated homebrew).

People are used to commercial wines that are super-filtered and processed, so they get squeamish if a wine is cloudy or has particulates or wine diamonds. Neither affects the quality of the wine. But clear and heat and cold stabilized are what we are used to in the store, so that is what many home winemakers do, to the extent of buying their own filtering systems.

Personally, I allow mine to settle out in aging and racking but I do not filter. I believe filtering does decrease flavor and color structure. The best blueberry wine I ever had came out of the bottom of a carboy. The dregs were allowed to settle in a wine bottle and a thick wine floated up. It had tons of flavor, all the heavier flavor elements that had settled out of the cleared blueberry wine by gravity.


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## LAgreeneyes (Aug 16, 2013)

jswordy said:


> No, it is not necessary to clear wines, but they will self-clear in the bottle anyway. So the idea is to let them do as much of that as they can (or force them to do it) before bottling.
> 
> When I lived in Illinois, I knew a guy who made lots of great wine by straining it at the end of the ferment once stable and bottling right away. When he gave it away, he would tell people to set the bottle upright a day and not to drink the last inch (similar to what people do with a bottle-carbonated homebrew).
> 
> ...



Great explanation. 

I really don't see clearing my future then.


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## DoctorCAD (Aug 16, 2013)

LAgreeneyes said:


> Did this strawberry wine need clearing?
> 
> Opinions.
> 
> ...



Clearing a wine has little to do with making a wine with no color. All clearing is intended to do is get dead yeast, micro-bits of pulp and other solids to fall out of the wine.

And, YES, that needs cleared up. I'd bet you can taste the dead yeast from across the room.


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## LAgreeneyes (Aug 16, 2013)

DoctorCAD said:


> Clearing a wine has little to do with making a wine with no color. All clearing is intended to do is get dead yeast, micro-bits of pulp and other solids to fall out of the wine.
> 
> And, YES, that needs cleared up. I'd bet you can taste the dead yeast from across the room.



I didn't taste any yeast. It was perfect for ME!


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## jswordy (Aug 16, 2013)

LAgreeneyes said:


> I didn't taste any yeast. It was perfect for ME!



Then it's perfect.


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## Bartman (Aug 16, 2013)

Perhaps the terminology is a little bit of the problem: "clearing" does *not *mean taking away all the color, so any wine looks like water or vodka afterwards. A better word would be "clarifying" because it is intended to remove the cloudiness from wine that is typically, but not always, a result of insufficient time after fermenting. One reason we ruse 'wine yeast' rather than baking or bread yeast, or other kinds of yeast, is because wine yeast will flocculate, which means to clump together and fall out of suspension after the yeast has finished and died, more readily than other yeasts. 

Even so, wine yeast will cloud your wine until you either use a clarifying agent, filter, or let enough time pass that all the visible cloudiness has settled out (I do the last of those). When I made Joe's Ancient Orange Mead, I used the prescribed bread yeast, and it never did get clear. Tasted fine though.

So is "clearing" necessary? Not really, but if you tasted freshly fermented wine that was not filtered, I bet you would taste the yeast. On the other hand, after 1-2 months of sitting that same wine might still be somewhat cloudy, but I doubt highly that you would taste any yeast (unless you stirred it up, which is sometimes done purposely in battonage, but that's another thread...).


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## BernardSmith (Aug 16, 2013)

For what it's worth I think you can feel the sediment in wines on your tongue and in your mouth. In my opinion it does not add anything to the experience. Quite the opposite. It's a bit like eating a salad when the fruit and vegetables have not been properly washed. You can taste the grit. The thing that makes what could be a transparent liquid (albeit a colored liquid) opaque or translucent are the particles of dead yeast and fruit. Clarifying the wine results in those particles falling out of the wine and then being removed before bottling. If you and your friends like opaque or translucent wine, that's fine but most folk seem to prefer transparent wines whose clarity enhances - and does not diminish - the color and taste of the wine. The opaque nature of the wine in the glass you photographed does not really suggest the color of freshly picked ripe strawberries, at least not the strawberries we can grow and eat in this part of New York State.


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## jamesngalveston (Aug 16, 2013)

I agree with doctor cad, and jswordy...
You say you want the wine to look like the fruit...I have never seen a pink strawberry, Now if you would have let that clear, it would have looked a lot like a strawberry color for sure...

If you ever make a wine, and you let it clear, are add a clearing agent, you will be amazed at the difference.
I think a clear wine is an indication of how much effort you want to put forth in making something as well as one can...
I would not want to sit down and eat rice and gravy with lumpy gravy, but thats just me...


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## midnightsolace (Aug 16, 2013)

If I were making a grape wine, I'd go for a very clean looking wine. Your strawberry wine pictures, on the other hand, look tasty! I think at that point it's going to be totally your call. As an example, I love pearl sake (unfiltered, looks like iridescent coconut milk) and my girlfriend loves the filtered diamond sake. The tastes are different, but I confess I don't know much of anything about making sake. All I know is that our differences are purely due to taste. It's the same with beer. A super filtered beer just doesn't taste right to me, and I know I'm rarely the norm on this one, but a good, fat Guinness is right up my alley.

The main reason why I prefer a clarified grape wine is because that's what I was raised on, and so that's what I'm used to. =) But, truly, your strawberry wine looks pretty awesome at least from the photos, and if you enjoy the taste, then you have yourself a good recipe for your wine.


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## LAgreeneyes (Aug 16, 2013)

Thanks for all of the replies. I think I'll stick to no clearing.


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## GaDawg (Aug 16, 2013)

I can see clearly now


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## jamesngalveston (Aug 16, 2013)

LOL, Gadawg...not looking through here wine....but good song, none the less...if it taste good, drink it....period, as long as it is not beet...


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## derunner (Aug 16, 2013)

I've had some commercial Tempranillo that was murky. Tasted great. Is that murkiness expected in some wines?


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## chrisjw (Aug 16, 2013)

LA, You have already done a visual test now why not do a taste test. Its pretty easy to clarify a very small amount of your wine and then do a blind taste test to see if there is any difference in taste. Just a thought and if you do it, please report back your findings.


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## Turock (Aug 17, 2013)

Are you drinking these wines dry? The problem with cloudy wine is if you're going to sweeten and use sorbate, the sorbate will not work because too many yeast cells are remaining. Sorbate only works in wine that has been cleared of as many yeast cells as possible.


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## jamesngalveston (Aug 17, 2013)

Excellent information, and just another reason to have a clear wine...


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## midnightsolace (Aug 17, 2013)

That is indeed good to know.


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## LAgreeneyes (Aug 18, 2013)

chrisjw said:


> LA, You have already done a visual test now why not do a taste test. Its pretty easy to clarify a very small amount of your wine and then do a blind taste test to see if there is any difference in taste. Just a thought and if you do it, please report back your findings.



Ok. I will do as you suggest and report back. Thanks for the homework assignment.


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## LAgreeneyes (Aug 18, 2013)

Turock said:


> Are you drinking these wines dry? The problem with cloudy wine is if you're going to sweeten and use sorbate, the sorbate will not work because too many yeast cells are remaining. Sorbate only works in wine that has been cleared of as many yeast cells as possible.



The wines I drink are sweet. I love VERY VERY VERY sweet wines. The sweeter the better.


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## jamesngalveston (Aug 18, 2013)

Miss Green eyes..I started a 5 gallon batch of strawberry using 40 lbs of fruit, yesterday.
It will be in the 15 to 17 percent abv. I am fast tracking it like a db.
I am taking pics and labeling day1, 2, 3 until it is clear..I will then compile to a short video for you.
You will see, that you can get a high abv,sweet and clear wine in less then 3 weeks....


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## Turock (Aug 18, 2013)

Then you should be clearing your wines first. The other reason to let a wine clear is to age the flavors. I'm sure your cloudy strawberry isn't as good on flavor as a mature strawberry. There is nothing more irritating to my palate than a young wine. 

Sorbate is not capable of preventing refermentation in a cloudy wine. Secondary fermentation will be taking place at a slow rate. You may end up with corks blowing out unless you keep them refrigerated.


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## LAgreeneyes (Aug 18, 2013)

jamesngalveston said:


> Miss Green eyes..I started a 5 gallon batch of strawberry using 40 lbs of fruit, yesterday.
> It will be in the 15 to 17 percent abv. I am fast tracking it like a db.
> I am taking pics and labeling day1, 2, 3 until it is clear..I will then compile to a short video for you.
> You will see, that you can get a high abv,sweet and clear wine in less then 3 weeks....



That is great!!!! Sounds exciting. If your way can do everything that I need in order to have a high ABV and still have a taste that is so sweet that I will need to make an appointment to the dentist because I have a cavity, then I'm in!! Lol. And to make it in 3 weeks, is even better. Heaven knows I have zero patience to wait years for it to age.

Thanks a bunch. I appreciate you doing that. I can't wait!!


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## jamesngalveston (Aug 18, 2013)

for a high abv and clear wine, dragon blood can not be beat...hands down..and you can make it and bottle in 2 to 3 weeks...and mine is always at the high end of abv...back sweeten until its syrup if you want...


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## LAgreeneyes (Aug 18, 2013)

jamesngalveston said:


> for a high abv and clear wine, dragon blood can not be beat...hands down..and you can make it and bottle in 2 to 3 weeks...and mine is always at the high end of abv...back sweeten until its syrup if you want...



Ooooooo. My kinda wine. I have been lurking on that thread and am excited to try it. I have been putting off on trying the DB but I need to get that going. If it's as fast and as sweet as you say, then I reckon I need to hurry along and get that started. I like that comment about back sweeten until its syrup. Lol


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## jamesngalveston (Aug 18, 2013)

do you speak french at all..


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## LAgreeneyes (Aug 18, 2013)

jamesngalveston said:


> do you speak french at all..



"Oui".

It was mandatory at our school growing up. In 1st grade is when started learning to speak French.


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## chrisjw (Aug 19, 2013)

Turock said:


> Sorbate is not capable of preventing refermentation in a cloudy wine. Secondary fermentation will be taking place at a slow rate. You may end up with corks blowing out unless you keep them refrigerated.



Can you provide more info (or a link) on why sorbate + kmeta will not prevent refermentation on a sweetened cloudy wine. Thanks.


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## djrockinsteve (Aug 19, 2013)

Potassium Metabisulfite only stuns a yeast thus allowing your commercial yeast to gain a foothold on the fermentation process. Too many people believe that K-Meta is a sanitizer when in fact it is not.

Potassium Sorbate prevents yeast from reproducing but will not stop fermentation by any then living yeast organisms.

Sorbate clings to the yeasts preventing them from breeding. At the dose of 1/2 teaspoon per gallon of wine yeasts may continue to feed upon any sugars currently in their environment but will not be able to continue to reproduce.

This is why we rack off of the sediment (living and dead yeasts and other stuff). We clear to also help remove as much of any living yeasts in suspension then rack again.

Aging with a high ABV and a lack of food creates a horrible environment for the yeast. In the event any yeast manage to hybernate and survive when and if you back sweeten sorbate is added to prevent or actually inhibit refermentation when sugar (food) is added.

This is why after you back sweeten you should wait a few weeks to a month before bottling to be able to see if a refermentation is taking place. Rushing usually leads to corks popping.

If your wine is cloudy it most likely still contains sediment which most likely will include left over yeasts. By adding sugar it very likely will start to ferment again.


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## Bartman (Aug 19, 2013)

I wondered the same thing - how does sorbate work in cleared wine but not in cloudy wine? Hard to find any scientific analysis, but several sources tracked what djrockinsteve said. The cloudiness typically harbors yeast (both live and dead) that can continue to survive and ferment wine without reproducing. Cleared wine almost certainly has far less live yeast that can ferment sugars into alcohol. So that makes sense to me.


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## midnightsolace (Aug 19, 2013)

Very informative, and good info to know... Saving it, myself!


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## chrisjw (Aug 19, 2013)

djrockinsteve, thanks for the explanation. 

So if one wanted to sweeten a cloudy wine (with a fermentable sugar) and keep it cloudy (without adding add'l alcohol to kill the yeast) the wine should be pasteurized. However, using a non-fermentable sweetener to sweeten a cloudy wine, without clarifying it, would be an easier solution.


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## Wiz (Aug 19, 2013)

I like to think I make a wine to the best of my ability. Therefore, I use bentonite, several rackings and filter before bottling.


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## SpoiledRotten (Aug 19, 2013)

LAgreeneyes said:


> Did this strawberry wine need clearing?
> 
> Opinions.
> 
> ...


 

And here is some of my strawberry. It just looks more inviting to me. Some really give a weird look when I ask them if they would like to try some of my homemade wine, mainly because they have most likely been offered some that looks like a smoothy rather than a glass of wine. 




This was racked again after this, but not filtered. I have yet to filter any of my wine.


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## Julie (Aug 19, 2013)

SpoiledRotten, haven't seen you on here for awhile. Loved your comment.


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## spaniel (Aug 19, 2013)

I use the least amount of bentonite that I feel will clear the wine. Why not something else? Because I use what I have a lot of experience with and am proficient with...no other reason.

If you plan on entering a wine competition, a cloudy wine will automatically give you a low score. I imagine if it is bad enough, the judge won't want to try it.

You can (usually) avoid any clearing agents if you are willing to let your wine sit long enough. We had a batch of apple once that nothing would clear, but a couple years or so sitting in the carbouy off in the corner cleared it pristinely. But I need my carbouys back before the next season, so I need to bottle...so I use bentonite.

If you bottle cloudy wine and do not drink it very young, you will have sediment in the bottle. Most simply don't find it attractive, its effect on taste can be argued.

In recent years I have had access to something I made wine a decade without...cold stabilization. I am now a huge fan. My neighbor sold me his old kegerator for $100, it now serves multiple purposes depending on the time of year.  Last week I found a working refrigerator on Craiglist locally for $50....I need to clean it and build a shelving system strong enough, and I should be able to get 3-4 carbouys in it this fall.


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## SpoiledRotten (Aug 19, 2013)

Julie said:


> SpoiledRotten, haven't seen you on here for awhile. Loved your comment.


 
Julie, I've been missing you and my other old friends, here. When I get a new toy or new interest added to the ones I have, I usually spend time on those type of forums to get the knowledge I need to use it. Well, we recently upgraded our hot tub, and have been spending some time on a couple of hot tub forums so I don't destroy it. Now, I'm going to be back for a while. 

LA wanted opinions so I had to give an honest one. That thick "wine" just doesn't look like something I'd want to try. The Pinot Noir that I make has got a lot of "body" to it, but it doesn't look like it came from the Ice Cream Parlor.

As most of you will remember with me, the biggest thing you guys had to get me to understand was the three "P"s. Patience... Patience... Patience. I finally got around to that and my wines are much more enjoyable.


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## chrisjw (Aug 22, 2013)

LA,

Another option is to stabilize, clear, sweeten, and then add back some fruit to make it cloudy again. I just added 4 cup of mashed triple berry to a cleared skeeter pee and it tastes great. I don't mind cloudy wine for early drinkers on hot summer days that I store in jugs and growlers. But if I plan to give it as a gift or store the wine for a long time, then I would clear it. 

SpoiledRotten's clear strawberry sure looks great.

How is your homework coming along? 
Chris


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## Johngottshall (Jan 15, 2014)

Trying to clear this peach / Rhubarb I put super kleer to it on Saturday today the same look what next??

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Wine Making mobile app


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## Johngottshall (Jan 15, 2014)

Not sure why the pic didn't post

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Wine Making mobile app


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## JohnT (Jan 15, 2014)

Put it into the fridge for 2 or 3 weeks, then rack it.


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## Johngottshall (Jan 15, 2014)

OK thanks will try that


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## Thig (Jan 15, 2014)

I had a pineapple wine that would not clear so I just named it Pineapple Haze and they thought it was on purpose.


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## Johngottshall (Jan 15, 2014)

Lol that may work also maybe use for sangria


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