Clarifying wine with cold at home: how to do it right
Making wine at home requires certain skills. Most often, the drink remains cloudy for a long time and you have to wait until it becomes transparent. After all, it will take time for the turbidity from stirred up yeast, excess pectin and protein, s alts of tartaric acids to settle to the bottom. You can speed up the process of clarification of wine with cold.
Principle of cold wine clarification
Cleaning or clarification of wine, both in industrial production and at home, is based on the principle of gluing particles together and precipitating them. Large flakes fall to the bottom the fastest, while small ones continue to float, making the drink cloudy.
By aging wine in cool cellars for a long time, the drink is clarified. But in today's world there is not enough time to wait. Therefore, different methods are used, adding substances to a cloudy drink that can stick together with particles that form haze.
Wine ages well in the cold. A drink made from grapes and cherries is especially quickly cleared. A bottle placed in a cold cellar for 2 weeks will soon please you with transparent alcohol inside. Under the influence of low temperatures, the process of wine fining takes place. Cold coagulates pectin and protein. Molecules of substances drag down other tiny particles.
At the same time, do not forget that clarification is carried out on matured alcohol. You can check the readiness of the wine by bringing the bottle into a warm room. Bubbles appearing inside indicate an unripe drink.
Advantages and disadvantages of the method
Wine cooling is chosen in order to accelerate the precipitation in the drink. The advantages of the method include the fact that:
- taste improves;
- flavour intensifies;
- acceleration of the aging of the drink;
- prevent the development of alcohol diseases;
- wine keeps better.
Having received a transparent, bright, fragrant drink in 2-3 weeks, you should be aware of the shortcomings of the method. Possible negative effects of cold clarification. Do not be surprised that the drink will have less strength than expected.
This is the best way to lighten white wines. Reds will deteriorate in color as a result of a decrease in extractives.
How to lighten wine at home
Perform cold cleansing procedure as follows:
- A bottle of wine is placed in the freezer or outside. Use for clarification cold cellar.The cooling temperature should not exceed minus 3-4 degrees. You can put the bottles in a double-walled box, upholstered inside with galvanized iron. The container is filled with snow and s alt. A tube is installed inside to drain the melt water.
- Keep for 2-3 weeks. In a box - up to 8-10 days.
- At the end of the procedure, the chilled drink is poured carefully so that the sediment remains inside the container.
- The wine should be filtered before it warms up. After filtering, the quality of alcohol will be high, the taste properties will be restored.
The wine should be poured after cleaning as quickly as possible so that air does not get inside. It is desirable to carry out filtration at the same temperature at which the bottles were kept. After the procedure, the drink is allowed to rest for 20-40 days. Then you can serve wine to the table. Do not forget that the clarification of alcohol, which has a lot of tannins, is better and faster when it has a high strength.
Among other clarification methods, pasteurization clarification can be distinguished. Bottles of alcohol are heated in a water bath, bringing the water temperature to 50 degrees. The procedure should be carried out 2-3 times until the turbidity disappears.
Perfectly cleansing red dessert wines egg white. Gently mix the whipped protein with a teaspoon of cold boiled water. Then stir in a glass of wine and pour into a bottle. The precipitate falls within 2-3 weeks. But still, one of the simplest and most affordable methods is the use of cold. Clarification passes faster, without unnecessary devices and time and effort.
How to avoid mistakes
One of the main mistakes in refining wines is that they are clarified when they have not been fermented. This is especially true of the method when egg white, gelatin, and milk are added to the drink. Even unfermented wine can't be spoiled by cold.
Since the drink, which has a lot of tannins, will clear faster, you can buy tannin at the pharmacy and add it to alcohol.To do this, the substance is dissolved in hot water with the addition of alcohol and poured into a bottle. This will not affect the quality of the wine. It is impossible to freeze wine alcohol, as this creates an unpleasant aftertaste in it. If the wines are properly processed by cooling, filtered after the procedure, they will retain transparency for a long time.
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