Who else filters the majority of their wines through a coffee filter?

I used to be a ‘purist’. I’d use a flashlight and look carefully through the bottle while decanting.

Now not so much.

I generally decant 3/4 of the bottle directly into a decanter and then the last 1/4 of the bottle through an unbleached coffee filter. Amazing how much sediment that removes and also how much wine you ‘save’ by doing this. I usually keep the 3/4 of the bottle separate from the 1/4 filtered part of the bottle and after some time taste the filtered one just to check. If no problems I mix the 2.

And if the bottle hasn’t been upright for a while, I’ll just put the whole thing through the coffee filter.

Some people don’t like the coffee filter idea, but here’s my understanding of the science, please let me know if you think this is not correct.

Even though wine is a colloid, the size of the suspended particles (not sediment, the particles that give wine it’s good flavors) are much smaller than the weave in the filter, so there’s no reason to believe the filter traps anything but the sediment (much larger particles). Wine colloids (not sediment or yeast cells, etc) are smaller than 1 micrometer, while coffee filters allow easily sizes up to 10-15 micrometers to pass through.

So unless you believe that the coffee filter itself imparts some off flavors to the wine (I’ve tested this with water, can find no difference in flavor between a glass of water poured directly vs a glass of water poured through the coffee filter, and if you can’t taste it in water, how are you going to taste it in wine?), it’s hard to see how any ‘flavors’ are being trapped by the filter.

Has anyone else done the ‘water test’? 2 glasses of water, blind, where one goes through the coffee filter and one does not?

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I never filter.

Neither do I.

Victor and Bud. Why don’t you filter? What in my above explanation do you disagree with and why?

I have used coffee filters, but they tend to get very slow very quickly. They also flop around/slide easily, and ultimately end up being a mess a lot of the time.

David. I have a large glass funnel (lab supply store). Filter in the funnel, no flopping around and can just leave it in the decanter while it finishes filtering. Easy Peesy.

Cone style filter or basket style?

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No. I drink mostly whites and fizz, and rarely have problems with sediment in my reds.

I occasionally use a metal screen/funnel combination when the wine is exceptionally cloudy with fine grain sediment. 90% of the time I am just careful in decanting

What?

At most, when I aerate my wines, it goes through the top metal screen to catch sediment. I kind of figure that the winemakers put the wine in the bottle that way so they must want me to drink it that way.

Same here.

I think in general, it sounds like a lot of work to save a small amount of wine. However, if the bottle hasn’t been stood up for a while, I can totally see doing this.
Most wines are filtered before bottling anyway, and the filters are pretty fine, in some cases find enough to remove microbes. So, it’s doubtful that a household coffee filter would remove any “vital essences” from the wine.

If I can chug a mug of chili-garlic hot sauce at 9:00 AM with no problem whatsoever, a bit of sediment in my wine is immaterial.

Yep, if it’s a better bottle of something like Bordeaux that is prone to coarser sediment (rather than, say the fine sediment of an old Barolo), I have no problem with using a coffee filter. I’ll actually decant carefully and normally first, then pour the remainder through the filter straight into a spare glass. If I think it’s worth finishing every last drop in the bottle, I’ll drink that glass last. Normally goes down a treat - some times even better than the clear stuff as it can retain more of the tannins in fine suspension. But then I’m the kind of wine drinker that always tries the sediment anyway, as I think it can give a really interesting perspective on the wine.

This. I’ll even sometimes retain some of the sediment in the glass from a particularly yummy wine and pour a different, lesser but similar wine into the glass, and swirl to dissolve some of the sediment and have found that frequently the sediment improves the lesser wine.

Peter,
I do it almost the same way - except I use paper-tissues (totally neutral, without any smell or odour of course) …
less stiff, more flexible, slightly finer and usable also with smaller funnels …
(a 100-pack 0.35 €).
Never any problms …

Many wines that are filtered are (today) not at the top … often substancial ingredients are early filtered out that way which would be necessary for proper aging (I´m talking about decades).

Many of my wines have (more or less) substantial sediment after 10-12 years … either leave a good 5-10% in the bottle (which is problematic for a tasting of 15-16 persons), or you run into danger of having sediment in the decanter.

As you said above coffee filters (or neutral paper tissues like I use …) won´t do any harm to the wine …

As someone who drinks a lot of very old Ports which contain a ton of sediment, this is something that has been talked about in Port circles for years. A few years ago some fellow Port experts from the UK, a couple Port producers and myself decided to finally put this to the test. The UK contingent loved to use the unbleached coffee filters. I loved the unbleached cheesecloth. The producers used whatever they had on hand, but mostly cheesecloth as well if they couldn’t simply free-hand pour it (which wastes a lot of liquid left in bottle). To my knowledge, this was the first time anyone had done such a test with old Port.

We gathered in the Douro with one old magnum of Port. All the decanters were identical and prepared the same so there wasn’t an issue of the decanter causing the change. Equal amounts from that one magnum were then free-hand poured, poured through unbleached cheese cloth, and poured through unbleached coffee filter. The decanters were taken away by staff and relabeled where we didn’t know which decanter had which Port in it, then brought back to the table where we tasted them blind.

The results were quite surprising.

  • Overwhelmingly and by a huge margin, the unbleached coffee filter was ranked the worst. It stripped the Port of flavor giving it a spirity and metallic taste. Even the UK folks were surprised by how different this single decanter showed and they generally no longer use coffee filters unless there is no other choice.

  • Second place went to the unbleached cheesecloth. Very little difference between this and freehand pour, but it was still ranked second as it didn’t retain all the fruit the freehand did. It was just slightly noticeable and unless you had another glass next to it as we did you probably wouldn’t notice the difference.

  • Freehand pour was the hands down winner. All but two people voted this was the best of the three.

OVERALL: it was enlightening to see how badly the coffee filter stripped the Port. I had no idea it would affect it that much. We all agreed that if you had to use coffee paper, freehand pour as much as possible first then only filter as you get to the bottom of the bottle. Cheesecloth and freehand were both regarded as the best two methods.

I do the screen/funnel thing when a wine is of a certain age. I’ve never used a coffee filter.

Huh? Wouldn’t the first decanter poured have the least amount of sediment?