[robie]

Originally Posted by eddyo78

thanks robie,

when i get home i will try your penny fix and see what happens. hopefully it is not h2s and it will clear up.

just to clarify, it isnt a rotten smell, it is more of a sulphur / rotten egg smell. when racking to secondary i got a taste and it tasted like rotten pineapples. but we shall see with the penny test, i have my fingers crossed.

Thanks. Yep, that does sound like H2S. If the penny test works and you don't want to wait for Reduless, do the following:
At the grocery store, they probably sell a pot scrubbing pad that looks like a big mesh of copper strains. Clean and sanitize a new one of these, tie a string around it and drop it in your carboy. Pull the string and let it bob around for a couple of minutes. Leave it in for a couple of days, then splash rack the wine into another carboy. This should solve your H2S problem. You may have to repeat this once more.

The thing about this treatment option is you may have to do it more than once, which can contribute to your wine possibly becoming oxidized, even though a couple times shouldn't really matter. With Reduless, the treatment is usually a one-time application and there is no danger of oxidation. If no Reduless, don't worry, though; home wine makers have been using copper for years with good success. Even using a clean, sanitized copper tube to stir the carboy will work well.

[eddyo78]

well.....the penny trick worked....it is H2S. the wine by itself is nasty but stirring it up in pennies seemed to do the trick.

I'll try the mesh copper and hope it works. the wine actually had a good taste to it so it is worth saving.

thanks for the help robie

Ed