What is the Purpose of Wine Filter?
Wine filter is used around the world by winemakers to clarify beverages. Wine filters are used to remove additives from wine, but most wine manufacturers claim that they have additives that don’t have sediments in wine.
Main Reasons to Have One in the House
There are three main reasons to have wine filters in the house: sulfites allergy as the first, aesthetics, and microbial stability.
Sulfites
Sulfites are commonly used in food and drugs as additives. They also occur naturally in some foods. Sulfites are used to preserve and prevent spoilage in foods. Most of the time, they’re used in beer, wine, frozen shrimps, condiments, to mention a few.
Sadly, some people are allergic to it. It might cause trouble breathing and swallowing, which isn’t a funny situation. That’s why most people with sulfite allergies don’t bother with drinking wine.
That’s why wine filters are needed in almost all houses because you never can tell which family member has a wine allergy.
Aesthetics
On the aesthetics part, Filtrating makes wine taste more polished in the mouth, and it can also soften the wine’s edges.
Aerobic Part
For the aerobic part, if there are residual Malic acid or sugar and Brettanomyces or Acetobacter due to the aging, then a wine filter is a must-have. It becomes the only solution to ensure microbial stability in your wine.
Different Sizes of Wine filters
Wine filter pore sizes are measured in microns. Most filters have 0.45,1,2,3,4,5 micron sizes. and Typical winemaking sizes are 5, 3, 2, 1, and .45 micron media. The logic used here is simple, the smaller the holes, the tighter the filter. Filtrating it guarantees microbial stability because of the small-size filters that are smaller than the microbes.
As the wine passes the filters, the microbes are removed from the wine. To remove yeast, you need to get a filter of 2 microns, and for removing bacteria, you need a filter of .45 micron.
Nominal Wine Filter and Absolute Wine Filter
A nominal wine filter removes most particles that are greater or equal to the micron size it comes with.
An absolute filter will remove all particles that are larger than the micron rating.
For filtering a small amount of wine, you don’t need any of the above-mentioned wine filters, a round plate wine filter is the best option. And for larger volumes, you can use a higher volume plate filter for ease.
Why You Need a Wine Filter?
- Removes Sulfites: You might be thinking your wines don’t have sulfites or the sulfites is low. But taking sulfites can increase your chances of getting headaches and hangover symptoms. So if you’re allergic to sulfites, you can simply filter your wine and boom! You can drink wine. Not only will this stop headaches, but it will reduce any allergies caused by taking wine.
- Aerates wine: In the process of using a wine filter, you’re aerating your wine. Aeration helps to eliminate undesirable compounds leaving the aromatic and desirable ones. Evaporating sulfites, in turn, evaporates ethanol. There are sometimes that when you open a bottle of wine, you’ll notice the alcohol. Aeration of the wine will easily solve that issue. No matter how dense or concentrated the wine is, it will benefit from aeration.
- Give your wine perfection: You can raise your wines to a higher level of perfection by using the filtration process. You see many noticeable improvements when you filter your wine – the appearance, age, wine stability, and the refermentation while it’s in the bottle.
Most winemakers prefer to filter their wine because of the polish look it gives to the wine. This implies that any wine—young or mature-will be remarkably improved if it undergoes filtration.
Coarse Filtration
Coarse filtration is one the most effective ways to make your wine more polished and radiant. It makes it look glassy, pure, and appealing—you just can’t resist the look.
Wine filters can also shorten the time wine can become fully mature. It simply reduces excess tannic acid and proteins, which are causes of harshness in young wines.
Fine filtration also improves the wines look slightly but not as efficient as the counterpart. This is efficient for white wines, blushes, rosés, and most red wines.
Read more: Mixing Wine & Coffee: Is it Good For Your Health?
How to Size a Wine Filter
A great wine filter is the first step to enhance the clarity of the wines you produce either at home or in the production plant. The logic behind sizing is to ensure that you’re able to filter a large volume of wine without clogging the filter medium. Sizing the filter well will ensure you don’t have to waste time removing clogs on the medium preventing loss of a large volume of wine.
The recommended size should be 20×20 com, so you’ll be able to run 15 to 20 gallons of wine efficiently without clogging.
Therefore a 15 plate wine can run 150 to 200 gallons of wine smoothly without clogging if the wine is settled or has been filtered previously in a rougher pad. Once you understand the logic behind the thumb rule, you’ll be able to determine what wine filter pad fits your purpose.