Home made wine filter?

[ChrisG]

Was thinking about this.....a pal of mine uses kitchen paper to filter his wine instead of buying the refills for Harris type filters.

Anyone else do this, as filter papers are pretty expensive?

[lockwood1956]

That isnt going to be any where near as effective as the harris papers, and im sure it will leave particles in the wine that will drop as sediment as it ages

sorry to say....

[goldseal]

You can use fewer filter pads by allowing the wine to clear on its own for longer (thereby clogging the pad up less easily), and filtering two similar wines at the same time, using the same pad. Flush the filter through with a little water between runs.

[crh75]

So far I have found that most wines don't need to be filtered. They look sparklingly clear on their own given time.

[hedgerow]

So far I have found that most wines don't need to be filtered. They look sparklingly clear on their own given time.

same here i normaly leave mine till its cleared on its own most of the time, manly because i am lazy and cant be bothered to fuss about with them.

one of my old tutors used to stuff a cotton wool pad into the noesel at the bottom of his funnel when filling a demi john for the first time to help fillter the worst of the rubbish but he never bothered with filters i dont evan think he own one

[ms67]

also a fan of the time method

[lockwood1956]

You will never get the same sparkle from a non filtered wine, but i don't always filter either...

but that final polish from filtering really makes the wine shine. Filtering should only be used to add sparkle to already clear wine.

regards
bob

[alcopop]

I have just filtered 3 galls of red wine two Blackberry and one red mixed fruit (to many types to itemize on here).cleaned up and passed kitchen back to SHMBO Sat down to look at posts on here and what do I find, first one on filtering.
As a rule I don’t filter unless I feel like it, which was not that often. My wines are always as clear as a bell before bottling but lately I seem to be getting paranoid about not getting every bit of yeast out before bottling (I have had one or two drop a slight sediment and I don’t like it).
Anyway back to the point of the post all three went through my Boots Filter almost as if the filter was not in the way the pad was a very dark red on top side and light pink one the reverse.
I was shocked to see the difference in the unfiltered and the filtered, I would have normally just bottled and been happy, as of today I will be filtering all of my wines before bottling , though I will try to get as many through the filter as possible to keep the cost down.
Terry

[lockwood1956]

As you quite rightly point out Terry, the difference between the clarity of filtered and unfilteered wine has to be seen to be believed.


while we are on the subject of filtering, lets bust a few myths

Filtering does NOT strip out colour as some claim....the wine is lighter in colour afterwards, but that is due to particles floating in there that make the wine look darker than it is....so those particles would have dropped out over time anyway (giving you the dusting of sediment you refer to Terry)

Filtering does NOT strip body from the wine, again it feels bigger in the mouth because it is actually a thicker consistency because of these suspended particles again.

Filtering renders the wine to its true state, having said that much like bottling, the wine will need a rest afterwards to return to normal.

There are several grades of filter pads available

The harris and boots filter papers aree I believe around 1 micron

mini jet filter pads come in the following sizes

coarse filter (generally 5 micron or more)
Fine Filter (generally around 1 micron)
Polish filter (less than 0.5 micron)

there are sterile filter pads available, but not for the kind of kit used by your average winemaker, and only sterile filtering will remove yeasties, and you generally need a membrane type of filter to accomplish this.

the kitchen paper is around (I believe) 20 microns and so is of not much use other than filtering out really big particles.


hope this helps
regards
Bob