On 26 Feb, 17:36, ddan > wrote:
> Hmm, this doesn't sound right to me.
>
> Pectin in your wine, in my experience, stops the wine from clearing.
> If the wine has cleared and then become cloudy again I may be wrong,
> but I doubt it would be pectin. Also I beleive that pectin clogs
> filters so if the wine ran through the filter...
> *I think it must be some form of instability; acid, tannin or protein
> maybe, but I have no experience in fault finding these and without
> knowing your process and all the ingredients in the wine, it would be
> difficult to work it out.
> *Apples contain malic acid which could be attacked by bacteria causing
> a cloud, citric acid can also suffer bacterial breakdown. Tannin can
> also produce hazes but I dont think Granny Smith contains that much
> tannin.
>
> If it were my wine I would put it all back into a bulk container and
> keep an eye on it, it may just need more time to re-stabilises and may
> well drop clear in a few weeks.
>
> Meanwhile post more info on your methods and see if anyone else comes
> back to you.
> Denis

Here's my recipe;

Dice 2.5 Kgs of apples - omitting the core. Boil 3 litres of water in
a big steel pot, put the diced apples in and simmer for 15 to 20
minutes stirring ocassionaly.
Strain the apples out and gently squeeze as much juice out of it as
you can. Discard the pulp and pour the juice into the fermenting bin.
Place the bin in the airing cupboard to cool down to fermenting
temperature. Once cooled, add the grape conc, citric acid, yeast
nutrient and 500 Kgs of sugar. Stir until the sugar is dissolved and
add the yeast. Let the must ferment for 3 days then add 250 gms of
sugar and stir in. Let the fermentation continue for another 2 days
then add 250 gms of sugar and stir in. After 2 days decant to a
demijohn and let it ferment to dry. Once the desired SG is reached
then add a campden tablet along with fermentation stopper and mix
well. Once fermentation has stopped add the clearing gel along with
another crushed campden tablet and stir. Once a large amount of
sediment has settled I rack it to a clean demijohn and continue to let
it settle. Around 7 days or more I filter with Boots thick filter pads
and bottle.
Now I've always used Braeburn apples with this method because a) They
taste better - for me. And b) Tesco stocks large Braeburns all year
round. (I'm unemployed currently so my choices are a little
restriced).
I decided to use Granny Smiths because England does produce fine
apples and what harm can broadening your palette do?
So you can see from the above recipe that I don't use pectolase and I
reckon I've just hit it lucky using Braeburns, but I'll be sure to use
it from now on.

Rgds,

McKevvy