I’m really pleased with your service, but need some advice. Last year I produced about 13 gal. of blackberry wine with 13% alcohol with pretty good taste. Problem–not as clear as would like. I’ve used pectic enzymes, sparkolloid and the diatase enzymes. Would like your recommendation on further clearing.
Thanks
Patrick J.
——
Hello Patrick,
Sorry to hear that your wine is not clear up all the way.
Usually when we see a situation like this in spring or early summer it is because the fermentation never did complete. In other words, the cloudiness is actually being caused by a slight resurgence of fermentation activity. The yeast went dormant during the cold winter months. But now, since things are warming up again, the yeast are starting to become active – just enough to cause the little bit of cloudiness you are experiencing.
If this is the situation, no wine finings will be able to clear a wine. The fermentation has to be allowed time to finish fermenting all the sugars.
One way to know if a renewed fermentation is what’s causing this cloudiness is to take a reading with a wine hydrometer to see if there are still sugars in the wine that could be causing a slight fermentation. This slight fermentation would most likely be too minor to detect by observing an air-lock, so using a hydrometer is the best way to determine this.
If you believe that there might be a fermentation going on, then your most practical course of action is to allow the wine to ferment until it is done. You can encourage the fermentation by adding a dose of yeast nutrient to the wine and by making sure the temperature stays between 70° and 75°F. Wine yeast is very sensitive to temperature.
If the wine hydrometer indicates that there are no sugars still in the wine, then we need to think about what wine making materials would best clear up the wine. If you have the book, First Steps In Winemaking, the author suggests using a bentonite fining, and I would tend to agree, particularly in the situation.
There are two reasons for this:

• Bentonite is good at clearing what Sparkolloid misses. So much so that some wineries will automatically use one then the other. Since you’ve already used Sparkolloid with limited success, it would only make sense to try its opposite.

• Bentonite is good at clearing excess proteins from a wine, including tannins. Sometimes when you have a wine that isn’t brilliantly clear at this late stage it is due to excessive tannin dropping or precipitating out of the wine. As a side note, warmer temperatures can induce this reaction as well.

Patrick, I hope this gives you some idea as to why your wine is not clear up all the way.
Happy Wine Making,
Ed Kraus
———————————–
Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Ed, I was looking for answers for when a malo-lactic fermentation is completed and came across your [malolactic fermentation] article. This is the first time I have used fresh grapes for making wine. I have 15 gallons in 3 five gallon carboys right now. I bought the malo- lactic culture at my local supply shop, they knew what kind of wine I was making. You stated in your article that malo-lactic fermentation should not be done to zinfandel wine….that’s what I am making. Did I screw up?
John F. — OH
—–
Hello John,
To say a malolactic fermentation ruined your wine is a bit of an over-statement. As I recall, the point I was trying to get across in the article about malolactic fermentation is that not all wines will benefit from a MLF, and in fact, some wines will not improve because of it, but may even become worse.
This does not mean that the wine will taste bad or be undrinkable. Barring any other faults in the wine, my guess is it will still be quite nice… it’s just that it probably could have been better.
I have never tasted a Zinfandel that has gone through a malolactic fermentation, so I do not know the potential results with any certainty. I am only going by what I see in the market, traditionally, and my imagination as to what it might taste like.
One of the stronger characters of any Zinfandel is its jammy/berry qualities. It’s what has made the Zinfandel grape so popular. This quality is much more prevalent in this grape than any other grape I can think of. It is what a Zinfandel drinker has come to expect from this type of wine. A malolactic fermentation will reduce this particular character of the Zinfandel. It will reduce the assertiveness of the berry flavors and bring it more towards earthy and rich. This would be OK if you are looking for the rich, earthy tones of a Burgundy, but with a Zinfandel you’re not. You are looking to showcase the perceived opposite — fruity and assertive..
If you have just introduced the wine with the malolactic culture, you still have a choice. Malolactic bacteria is very sensitive to sulfites. That is to say, you can treat your wine with a single dose of either: Campden tablets, potassium metabisulfite or sodium metabisulfite to stop the malolactic fermentation. No harm, no foul.
Another thought is since you have three carboys going, maybe you could stop the malolactic fermentation in two of them and let the third one go. This would only be if you were interested in having better understanding of what a malolactic fermentation does to a wine. If you really don’t care and do not want to give up 5 gallons “to science”, then add sulfite to all three.
I hope this information helps you out and help you to understand why the malolactic fermentation did exactly ruin your wine. I know that everything I’ve said is not 100% definitive. This is because we are talking about wine. Everyone’s perception of it is different. For example, it is possible that you will like the Zinfandel that has gone malolactic fermentation better than that which has not — not likely, but possible. I can only go by what my personal taste are and what I have learned to be the tastes of most others. For this reason, don’t take my words as gospel. Take them as some practical advice.
Happy Wine Making,
Ed Kraus
—————————————————————————————————————–
Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I am about to age Cabernet Sauvignon in a six-gallon barrel. Should I filter the wine before it goes into the barrel or after it comes out before bottling?
John S. — VA
—–
Hello John,
Thanks for the great question. I don’t think this question has ever been asked or answered on our blog before, so here we go…
You want your homemade wine to go through the barrel-aging process before filtering. But having said this, it is important to understand that you want to give the wine some time before going into the barrel. You don’t want it to go straight in to the wine barrel the moment the fermentation completes. Give time for the solids to settle out, first. This might only take a few days or it could be a couple of weeks. Regardless, give the wine whatever time it needs.
The goal is to keep the bulk of the sediment from getting into the wine barrel. Most of the sediment at this stage will be comprised of dead yeast cells. Typically, this is something you do not want your wine resting on while in the barrel. The result could be something called autolysis. This is a process that leads to a bitter-nut to metallic taste in the resulting wine.
The reason you want to filter your wine after barrel-aging is because of what happens while the wine is in the barrel. There are a lot of processes that go on. One of the more significant ones is tannin precipitation. As tannin is leached from the wood of the barrel, it sets off a chain-reaction, of sorts, that causes the excessive tannins that are normally in a young wine to solidify and drop out as sediment. This is one of the key factors in reducing the harshness of a wine.
There are many other organic process that go on during aging besides this that can contribute to other precipitates as well. With this in mind, it only makes sense to filter the homemade wine after the barrel-aging and not before. Why filter the wine when there is more sediment on the way.
John, I hope this answers your question. Just remember to also give your wine plenty of time before going into the barrel and then plenty of time while its in there. You can filter your homemade wine after the barrel-aging is complete.
Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
—————————————————————————————————————–
Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

How do you add the yeast and yeast nutrients to the wine juice? Do you pour it on top and leave it be or do you mix/stir it in? This is for the primary fermentation.
Daniel — CA
—–
Hello Daniel,
Thanks for the great question. Adding wine making ingredients to a batch of wine is something that can be taken for granted, but there is good way to do it, and a not-so-good way to do it.
In general, it’s a good idea to dissolve any winemaking ingredients in a little bit of the wine before adding it to the entire batch. This includes both the wine yeast and yeast nutrient.
Having said this, I can tell you that I am guilty of not following my own advice. I have often added acid blend, nutrients, tannin and other wine making ingredients directly to whole batch and then stirred to dissolve them.
How we like to go about adding wine making ingredients wouldn’t make much difference one way or the other except that when you add these ingredient directly, you are never 100% sure that they are getting completely dissolve. My guess is they usually are — at least with some time — but this is only a guess on my part. For this reason I would play it safe and pre-dissolve the wine making ingredients in a little sample then blend that back into the batch.
As for adding wine yeast to a batch of wine, there are some different opinions. Even the directions on the packets of dried wine yeast say to do something different than dissolving it into some of the wine must. So why do I differ?
Wine yeast directions typically say to put the yeast into warm water, at a specific temperature, for a specific length of time. This is to re-hydrate the wine yeast… to wake it up, so to speak. Even if these directions are being followed exactly, a portion of the wine yeast is being killed, but not nearly enough to cause the fermentation to fail. When these directions are not being followed precisely, a very large number of the yeast cells can be killed — even all of them.
I have discovered over the years that many home winemakers do not follow these directions precisely. The water temperature is not checked and the length of time is not timed. Sometimes the yeast is left sitting on the counter until completely cooled, when it should have been at that temperature for maybe 10 minutes. The result is dead yeast and a failed fermentation. Every minute the yeast remain at that high temperature, more yeast cells are dying. For every degree higher then the temperature specified, more yeast cells are dying. So as you may be starting to see, there are pro’s and con’s to using either method of adding wine making yeast.
When you add dried wine yeast to a little wine at room-temperature you do not have all these risks. The wine yeast will not take off quite as fast as if it had been re-hydrated per directions, but usually we are talking only a few hours. Some of the yeast cells will die using this method because of cell wall damage, but not anything even close to the extent as if the yeast were over-heated.
For these reasons, I suggest dissolving the dried wine yeast in wine must. Unless you’re actually planning on taking the waters temperature and timing the length of time the yeast spend at that temperature, this is usually your best option.
Daniel, I hope this answers your question about adding wine making ingredients. Just make sure you pre-dissolve everything and you should be good to go!
Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
—————————————————————————————————————–
Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I am making several batches of wine and every one of them has formed a ring of black mold growing at the top of the airlock. I use cleanser water in the airlock assuming it will kill anything it comes in contact. What would cause this mold to form and will it hurt the wine?
Greg R. — ID
—–
Hello Greg,
Not only is there mold growing in your airlock, there’s mold floating in the air, in our cars, on our clothes, in our homes. There’s mold spores everywhere, just in small enough numbers as to be of no consequence to anything or even to be detectable. But, if mold gets the right conditions, it can grow and colonize. Because of this, no matter how well you clean and sanitize a surface, mold can land and grow there if the conditions are right — temperature, humidity, sunlight, nutrients, etc.
The mold growing in your airlock, by itself, is not going to hurt the wine by being there. If there is a fermentation, CO2 gas will be blowing off keeping any mold spores from getting to the wine. However, this can become a big problem once the fermentation has stopped. Not only is there no protective gas blowing out through the airlock, there is a possibility that some air can flow backwards through the airlock and into the wine, taking mold spores along with it. If fact, if your fermentation is already complete, I would strongly urge you to add a dose of sulfite to the wine, if you have not done so already, This could be either Campden tablets, potassium metabisulfite or sodium metabisulfite.
I normally don’t recommend this, but since you have a stubborn mold growth going on, you may want to consider filling your airlock with a high-alcohol distillate such as grain alcohol or Everclear. This will keep your airlock continuously free of mold growth and kill any mold spores that my be trying to get their way into your precious wine. Also, if the alcohol gets sucked into the wine for whatever reason, it would not harm it. Any mold spores in the alcohol will be dead.
The reason I don’t normally recommend using alcohol in an airlock is because the alcohol evaporates rather quickly and can cause the airlock to go dry if you are not paying attention. But you can go this route. Just understand that you will need to add more alcohol every few days. Don’t let the airlock go dry; check it often.
Having mold growing in airlocks is not a pressing issue that winemakers normally have to deal with. Sanitizing the airlocks and filling them with water is usually enough, but it seems that there is a lot of mold in your neck of the woods right now, so it is something that needs to be dealt with. Don’t feel that you will always need to use alcohol in your airlocks. Next time you make wine there may be no mold growth in the airlock at all.
Happy Wine Making,
Ed Kraus
—————————————————————————————————————–
Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I know nothing about mead. What does mead taste like? Dry or sweet.
Jerre — TN
—–
Hello Jerre,
This is a very loaded question because there are is such a wide varieties of meads. There are meads made with herbs or spices added in addition to the honey (metheglin). There are meads made with the fruit (melomel). You can mix honey with apple juice to make a cyser. You can also mix honey with grape juice to make a pyment. This list goes on and on. This makes it hard to answer the question: “What does mead taste like?”
Not all honey is the same, either. What the bees use to spin the honey can make a great difference. There’s apple blossom honey, clover honey, buckwheat honey, tupelo honey… Again, the list is endless. The source of nectar will have an effect on the resulting mead. The cheapest, generic honey will be wild flower honey.
Just like any wine, mead can be made sweet or dry. This is completely up to you, based on your personal preference. It is simply a matter of sweetening to taste at bottling time with sugar, more honey, or anything else you’d like to experiment with. A wine stabilizer (potassium sorbate) should be added at the same time to prevent the chance of a re-fermentation in the bottle.
The point here is that there are an extremely wide range of flavors that can be experienced when drinking meads. For this reason putting a good description as to what a mead tastes like is almost impossible. It is similar to the question, “what does a grape wine taste like?” The flavors vary to greatly to encapsulate in a few words or paragraphs and there is nothing to accurately compare it to.
Here’s what I will say, all meads do have a subtle core flavor or character that can be identified. There is a flavor of honey. If it is a dry mead, imagine what honey would taste like without the sweet. Now take that flavor and imagine what it would taste like with the heat of alcohol. This is the best possible way I can think of to answer the question, what does a mead taste like? However ,I do confess that this is completely inadequate.
If you need more description than this, I would suggest buying a bottle. Actually taste a mead for yourself before expending time and effort on making your own mead. There is no other way to really know what a mead tastes like other than to try if for yourself. In my personal experience there is nothing to hate about a mead. I find most meads very pleasant and some even interesting. I also like to use honey two back-sweeten my other wine or to raise the potential alcohol of my other wines. Here’s a mead recipe to get you started.
Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
—————————————————————————————————————–
Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Hi, I have two one gallon batches of wine going. One is blueberry and the other is muscadine. They both smell and taste soured. What is wrong?
Brandon A. — NC
—–
Hello Brandon,
It’s really hard for me to know exactly what you did wrong, if anything. What I can tell you is there are two key reasons for a homemade wine spoiling:

1. The number one reason for a wine spoiling is because sulfites were not used in the winemaking process — sulfites such as Campden tablets or potassium metabisulfite. Skipping the use of sulfites does not guarantee that your homemade wine will go bad, but it does increase the chance of this dramatically.
2. The number two reason for a wine spoiling is that the fermentation vessels and equipment were not sanitized. They may have been washed in soapy water, but not sanitized with something like Basic A or Cleanpro SDH. Soap will get the grime off the surface of the equipment, but to destroy all traces of mold and bacteria that can later grow and take over a wine, you need to use a cleanser of some sort.

The absence of sulfites and cleansers in the winemaking process is the reason almost all wines spoil. They are fundamental and should always be used when making wine.
Another reason a homemade wine can start spoiling is if the fermentation is not strong. You can sanitize everything and add sulfites to the wine must before fermenting, but all this is futile if the fermentation does not take off quickly and fully. A wine must that is sitting still for several days is a prime target for being taken over by molds, bacteria and other little nasties that might be floating in the air. The wine must is packed with nutrients and sugar. What more could a contaminant ask for?
This is one of the reasons you do not want to rely on wild yeast to ferment your wine. As a home winemaker there are too many other airborne microbes competing with the yeast for a place to colonize. You want to use domesticated wine yeast so that it has the upper-hand. The yeast cell count will be greater and the yeast more vigorous. Once you have a solid fermentation, mold and bacteria will not stand a chance. It’s analogous to having a solid stand of grass in your yard to help keep the weeds down. A strong fermentation keeps the contaminants down.
The last thing I’d like to bring up is that your wines may be perfectly fine. If this is your first time making wine, it may be that you have not experience what a fermentation smells and taste like and are just mistaking the usual odors for the wine spoiling. During a fermentation you should be smelling the fruit used to make the wine, but you will often times also experience a sulfur smell from the fermentation — sometimes like a freshly boiled egg. I’m not saying this is what’s going on, I just wanted you to be aware of this.
It you are correct and your homemade wine is spoiling, one thing you can be assured of is it will get worse. If it is not spoiling, then you will notice the symptoms getting better, until eventually you end up with a great tasting wine. At this point there is little you can do. If the fermentation has finished you should be adding a full dose of sulfites. But, other than that it’s a wait and see proposition. There is nothing you can do to reverse any effects. Time will take care of this homemade wine if is still fresh and not spoiled.
Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
—————————————————————————————————————–
Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Hi there, I have to say, thank you for the amazing site. It’s been a wealth of knowledge… I will hopefully be moving cross country in the next few months. Currently I have two wines I am in the process of making… My questions are what would be the best way to transport a possibly bulk fermenting wine? If they are done fermenting am I safe to degas the wines, then plug the carboys and move or should I add something to either of them? As a side note, I do plan on making crates to protect the carboys…
Isaac — WA
—–
Hello Isaac,
There are several concerns when moving homemade wine cross country: sunlight and temperature being my two biggest ones. Both of these promote oxidation in the wine. This is where a wine starts to take on a brownish or orange-like tinge, and the wine’s flavor starts to take on a bitter, raisin character.
You will want to keep the wines out of direct sunlight. You also want the wines’ temperature to stay consistent. The cooler the better. This will help to slow down the oxidative process, but i understand you can only do what you can do.
You can move the wine in carboys — degassed and sealed up tight — but if the wine warms up just a few degrees, it can pop the rubber stopper out of the carboy. Six gallons of wine can easily expand enough from any warmth to push out a stopper.
You can wire down the stopper with some bailing wire. If the wine warms up a few degrees you should be fine, but if the wine warms up excessively, you could be building up considerable pressure in the carboy, which is never a good thing. Having a carboy fail is not unheard of in such situations.
Sediment is another concern when moving homemade wine cross country. The ideal situation is for all the sediment to be gone before moving. In other words, the wine has cleared up completely and is not depositing any new sediment. You have also removed the wine from all the sediment that has occurred.
Leaving the sediment in the carboys while traveling can promote a process call autolysis. This is when some of the live yeast cells start consuming some of the dead yeast cells. The result is a wine that starts to take on a nutty / to bitter / to metallic flavor. It is something that occurs to some insignificant degree in any wine, but when the sediment is contentiously being stirred up by the constant vibration of traveling, the amount of autolysis can become excessive.
Here’s What I Would Do If I Were Moving Homemade Wine Cross Country…

1. Have the wine cleared and degassed. You would like to have the wine this far along in the winemaking process.
2. Put the wine in carboys. The carboys should be topped-up. You do not want excessive head-space. There are several ways you can eliminate head-space in a carboy. Having excessive air in with the wine will help promote oxidation, as well.
3. Add a dose of sulfite. This could be Campden tablets, potassium metabisulfite or sodium metabisulfite. Use 1/16 of a teaspoon per gallon or 1 tablet per gallon of wine. Sulfites will go a long way in help to reduce any effects of oxidation and help to keep the wine from from oxidation.
4. Seal the carboys with an actual tapered cork stopper. Cork will allow some pressure to release if it built up. A rubber stopper will not give at all. A tapered cork stopper will breath a little.
5. Wire down the tapered cork stopper with bailing wire. This can be done by going around the neck of the carboy with the wire, then running one strap of wire over the top of the cork stopper and securing the end.

Your idea of putting the carboys in crates is a good idea. You can never be too protective particularly when moving your homemade wine cross country.
Good luck to you. I hope this was the information you was looking for.
Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
—————————————————————————————————————–
Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.