How To Filter Wine Before Bottling

Wine with Tim Vandergrift

Sometimes information technology seems like filtering is the final borderland of dwelling winemaking. For every winemaker who filters, there are dozens who don't. Some because the wine is just fine without filtering (and information technology is!), others because they don't desire to bother with the extra footstep or the expense, and others considering they're concerned that filtering will hurt their wine rather than aid information technology.

But helping is what filtering is all nearly. Non only does filtering brand a finished wine look better (think of the difference betwixt a freshly washed car and a freshly waxed motorcar—that's the departure filtering makes) simply also it promotes stability in the finished vino considering when you lot removed suspended solid material with a filter it won't drop out later or mutate into crusty goo over fourth dimension. Filtering is great and cool, and virtually people who are concerned are really frightened about zero. Nonetheless, that's non to say yous tin't mess things up with a filter.

Do I Have to Filter my Wine?

Not at all: vino kits have very depression levels of suspended solid material. Fining agents similar bentonite, Chitosan, isinglass and Kieselsol, bargain with haze-causing proteins and 99% of the yeast give you clear wine that will taste corking and historic period well.

There's an illustration my friend Jeff came up with twenty years ago that works well: the difference betwixt a fined vino and a filtered vino is the departure between a freshly washed automobile and a freshly waxed machine. They both look good, only the waxed car looks spectacular and is much more appealing. Long-term you can look forwards to greater stability, as the wine volition not change in flavour or appearance during aging. Sediment volition almost always form in unfiltered wines subsequently enough time. These consist of dead or dormant yeast, tannins, and colloids (proteins, mostly). The problems effectually filtering are actually the same as whatever handling or processing in winemaking, like racking or stirring. There'due south a possibility of introducing oxygen or devious contaminants when you expose the vino to the filter. Both of these are easily avoided by good winemaking practice. Make clean and sanitize your filter by taking it apart, soaking and scrubbing, rinsing and sanitizing, and you won't need to worry about bugs. Oxidation is fifty-fifty less of a worry. While filters agitate the wine as it passes through them, they don't really add oxygen to it. Most home filter set-ups are pressurized, meaning they utilize a pump to force wine down a hose and through the arrangement. If there is a leak somewhere in them, vino will catamenia out nether pressure and oxygen won't make it.

Wine with Tim Vandergrift Filtered Wine in Fermenter

Actual Danger of Filtering Wine

The only real issue is the same as for any processing operation in winemaking, from racking to fining and stabilizing: the adventure that you'll introduce oxygen into the vino. Filtering agitates wine every bit it travels through pumps, hoses and filter media, merely doesn't necessarily innovate oxygen into it. Most filter set-ups are positively pressurized, meaning they apply a pump to force vino downwardly a hose and through the system. If there is a leak somewhere in the filter betwixt the pump and the carboy the vino is going into, it'southward going to squirt vino out, non suck air in. The potential issue comes in if y'all run the output hose downwardly the side of the receiving carboy, where it tin can fan out and betrayal an enormous surface surface area to oxygen pick up—gently place the output hose straight into the bottom of the carboy instead, and allow the tip to submerge as it fills, keeping everything as quiet as possible.

This won't even exist an issue if y'all've followed the instructions for maintaining the sulphite levels in your wine and kept your carboys topped up during storage. I usually do a sulphite examination on my wines before filtering and if they've dropped, I superlative them upwardly to 35 PPM FSO2. If that sounds like a lot of bother, measuring and testing, you can simply add a (precise!) one-quarter teaspoon of sulphite pulverisation to every six gallons of wine and that will elevation it upwardly past virtually 12-fifteen PPM, a good buffer for the extra treatment.

Mythical Dangers of Filtering Wine

Does filtering strip color, flavour or aroma? Yep and no. But actually 100% no, considering whatsoever reduction in odour and flavor is strictly temporary. The kinds of filters available to dwelling winemakers operate on the micron scale, with the tightest, most efficient filters stopping somewhere above 0.2µ, about two-tenths of a micron. Your typical wine yeast cell is around 0.45µ, and a freshly budded daughter prison cell (they abound upwards so fast, sniff) is down at the 0.2µ mark. Information technology's far more than common to run across filters that allow the passage of textile as large equally two to four microns in size. Colour molecules, the aforementioned anthocyanins, are non on the micron size. They are so very much smaller that their construction can't be seen with a microscope. They're and then tiny that in fact they volition sail straight through a filter pad or cartridge entirely unimpeded—you lot can't filter them out.

Which begs the question, for anyone who has ever used a filter on a red vino, why do the pads come out stained with color? Those stains aren't pure, happy color compounds: they are color compounds that have already leap to other kinds of goo in the wine ingredients. When bound to tannin, they'll autumn out afterwards equally a deposit (mentioned above) and when jump to a colloid, they'll fall out as sediment. This is a vast over-simplification (I specialize in those) but the cadre truth is that you cannot filter out color with civilian filter pads—not any colour that wouldn't fall out on its own anyway. The goo on the pads was never going to stay, never going to contribute, and made the wine wait crappy and hazy. What goes for color compounds goes for flavor and aroma molecules: they're just too dang small to stick to filter pads. And nevertheless anyone who has always filtered a vino has most certainly noted that information technology tastes notably less singled-out and aromatic post-filtering. The good news is that this condition is temporary. Requite the wine a few weeks rest, and often only 24 hours will do it, and the aromas and flavors snap back into focus, good equally new, with filtering non to blame subsequently all.

Wine with Tim Vandergrift Filter and Wine Bottle

Do I Accept To Employ Fining Agents If I'm Going To Filter Anyway?

YES! You can't filter a wine that isn't already actually, actually clear. The corporeality of yeast and goo in intermission would clog a filter upwards and then desperately that you'd spend more than the cost of the vino kit itself in filter pads before you got to the stop. If we get back to the car analogy, you can't wax a car that hasn't already been done thoroughly: waxing isn't to remove dirt, it'south to put a concluding smoothen on the car. Filtering isn't intended to clear wine information technology's to put a final shine on it right before bottling.

Summing Up Wine Filtering:

You lot don't have to filter, but your wine will do good from it.
Filtering doesn't damage wine in any way.
Filter wines only after they've been fined.
You lot can't clear upward cloudy wine with a filter. Y'all can polish articulate vino with a filter.
Filtering is a handling pace that introduces oxygen. Make sure your free SO2 levels are appropriate.
Wine judges like shiny clear vino, as exercise most casual drinkers.

I final word on whether or not filtering harms or helps a wine, I heard an interview with Christian Moueix, the winemaker who made Chateau Petrus for decades. Petrus retails for thousands of dollars per canteen and is pretty much the byword for crazily desirable French wine. The interviewer knew that Moueix sterile filtered the wine, and was conspicuously in agony, because conventional wisdom says 'filtering bad'. He asked Moueix why he dared to filter such a cute wine. "Considering", Moueix replied, "I don't hate my customers." I'll beverage (filtered wine) to that.