Splash Racking - how much?

I Did my first rack of Black Malvoisie about 5 weeks ago, 2nd rack about 3 weeks ago.

from the get go, one of my carboys had a strong rotten egg smell. (By the way, I used ambient yeasts...)

Interesting one of the 15 gallon carboys smelled great, but the other one, not so good.

I tried splashing the wine around on the second rack, but it did little to help..

Anyhoo...

Upon the advice of others, I initiated on Sunday an intensive (3rd rack) splash racking session with the smelly carboy contents. I filled up three 5 gallon buckets of the smelly wine and I poured each bucket 10 times into an empty bucket and I added the recommended dosage of sulfites. Thankfully, the smell has improved greatly.

Question for you all: the smell has not gone away totally, should I do another intensive splash racking now, (it is a lot of work...)

OR... Can I wait another two or three weeks to see if it improves on its own?
Will it ever just go away? Or do I need to keep working at it...

I will say that I tasted (offending) wine and it tastes pretty darn good...

Something that has worked for me is to hang a few copper wires in the wine (after carefully cleaning, sanitizing and rinsing them) or you could get a few and just stir the wine for a period with them and see if that helps. I use the ground wire out of a 3-wire Romex.

If you have a drill mounted stirrer, you could give it a good "whipping" with the stirrer and it should also help.

I have heard and read about the danger of poisoning with copper, is that a concern with wire also, or just when adding copper chemicals in powder form?

I don't think copper is a problem.

Most water pipes are made from copper and from an alcohol standpoint, stills are commonly made of copper.

You do not have to worry about the amount of copper you will get from stirring with it. Copper in big amounts is not good for you, but this doesn't amount to much. You can also get one of the copper scrub pads from the grocery store, clean and sanitize it and let it sit in for a little while. The few times I have had to do this, just stirred with a clean sanitized copper wire and it helped greatly. Arne.

thanks, I'll give it a try...

Arne said:

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Copper in big amounts is not good for you,
...

Click to expand...

Actually, large amounts can be toxic.

Edit:
Although I'd be more concerned with impurities with these methods.

Had the same problem with Chilean grapes this year. Tried splash racking 3 times and got the smell to reduce quite a bit. The copper thing did not work for me. I used reduless with pretty good results. The longer you let it sit in there the harder it is to get out. Reduless is a derivative of yeast bodies, you aren't putting chemicals in your wine either.

Good answer, Joe. Always learning something new on this forum. Thanks, Arne.