Tuesday 10 October 2017

Clear as mud

Well, for some reason, the plum wine isnt clearing. Wine making has taken up pretty much most of my spare time recently, and shortly some beer brewing will also join my activities, now I have a nice big fermentation bucket!

Thats not to say there is no radio planned! Due to workload, and my walking mate Bob M1BBVs change of career, walking and field radio have been rather sparse. However, hopefully soon (next few weeks) we will be back out there. A few rail trail walks and some long outstanding SOTA is on the horizon!


Anyway, back to the wine! It would seem the problem here is a protein or pectin haze. As this wine has already has two-part finings (isinglas/gelatine and keiselsol) ive decided to try another electropositive fining agent,  this time Bentonite, which is known for its ability to drag proteins out of suspension. Its a bit more faffy to use than other finings, as the extremely hygroscopic particles of this volcanic clay must be hydrated into a slurry prior to use.

But, it does also give me a chance to exchange the airlock and bung fitted, with a solid bung, freeing up the airlock for other use. Hopefully now this wine will clear over the next couple of days, and can then be bottled - which will free up the demijohn for racking off one of the other wines!

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