TESCO Summer Fruits Wine - clearing problems?

[winewbie127]

I’ve been making home brew beer and wine for some months now and of course I wanted to make some real cheap hooch, besides just kits. :whistle:

So I’ve been scouring supermarkets for cheap fruit-based drinks to turn into alcohol and recently stumbled on ‘TESCO Summer fruits drink’, at £1.10 for 2 L :clap: and with a stated sugar content of 120 g/L. I bumped that up to about 250 g/L and stuck a flat teaspoon (for the 2 L) of Alcotech Turbo wine yeast in there, starting temp. about 25 Celsius. An empty, sterilised PET cider bottle is used as a fermenter, with a hole in the cap plus pricked balloon as airlock. :rofl:

At the same time I started another 6 bottles DJ of ‘Young’s Chardonnay style’ kit, which I must say is delicious (at about £1.40 a bottle), even if you drink it immediately after bottling (as we do).

Both finished fermenting completely in 14 days flat. To the Young’s the usual kit supplied finings were added, to the hooch 1 g of metabisulphite and 4 ml of Young’s Wine finings ‘B’, the latter was bought at a Tesco superstore (sachet enough for 30 bottles). Both were very thoroughly degassed by shaking repeatedly.

What surprises me is that the grape wine from the kit clears so much faster: the grit seems to hit the DJ bottom like lead shot but for the fruit drink based wine it takes a longer time to clear. I had previously ran a very similar batch with the same juice and encountered the same problem, despite the fact that the slightly cloudy end product was very palatable. :hmm:

I’ve been reading up like mad here and get buzzwords like Bentonite, pectolase, waterglass etc. :wha:

Anybody have any suggestions for turbo-clearing this wine? :

 

[klaus]

Adding pectolase at the fermenting stage is advisable for fruit wines, which helps clearing. I think you need to balance quality and speed.

 

[winewbie127]

Adding pectolase at the fermenting stage is advisable for fruit wines, which helps clearing. I think you need to balance quality and speed.

Thanks klaus. :thumb: Unfortunately it is too late for that now and it really looks like clearing will take an age: the grit is very fluffy and settles badly. And the liquid that's been partly cleared isn't all that clear either.

Would it be possible to syphon over into another clean, sterile bottle and add another clearing agent and if so what?

I have another batch of that type of wine about ready to start clearing, this one 'spiced up' a bit, and the same problem can be anticipated there. :hmm:

 

[graysalchemy]

You can add 2 tsp per gallon of pectolase post fermentation.

 

[winewbie127]

You can add 2 tsp per gallon of pectolase post fermentation.

Thanks, secret brewer :thumb: . I think I'll let this batch run some more but add 1 tsp of pectolase to the second batch of 2 L 'summer fruits' wine (just a few days off the end of fermentation now), so a nice comparison can be made. :idea: