Gross Lees

Of my 110 liters, the bottom 10 liters are disgusting. Cloudy pink gritty liquid. Is this all gross lees? Or is gross lees just what is at the very bottom?

How much wine do you expect to lose w first racking to make sure you don't transfer the disgusting wine at the bottom?

derekjames100 said:

Of my 110 liters, the bottom 10 liters are disgusting. Cloudy pink gritty liquid. Is this all gross lees? Or is gross lees just what is at the very bottom?

How much wine do you expect to lose w first racking to make sure you don't transfer the disgusting wine at the bottom?

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I typically expect to lose approximately 3/4 of that volume. However, I found that no matter how hard I try to avoid transferring this gritty pinkish-grayish-white mass from the bottom of the primary into the secondary (even with extra fine mesh bag as an additional precaution), I always end up with some of its finer particles on the bottom of the secondary after a day or two. I am not sure you can leave all of this lees behind with one racking. I try to not even touch the surface of this layer when racking from the primary, but some of it still gets carried along. As a result, I typically rack once again in a few days before starting MLF, at which point the pinkish sediment is gone for good. Any sediment that forms thereafter is much closer to the color of the wine.

Remember this is just step ONE in your clearing process.

You have many more steps ahead of you in the clearing process. It doesn't matter if you get some of the gross lees pulled over. That is food for your MLB right?

ibglowin said:

Remember this is just step ONE in your clearing process.

You have many more steps ahead of you in the clearing process. It doesn't matter if you get some of the gross lees pulled over. That is food for your MLB right?

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I think of fine lees more as mlb food and gross lees as the source of problems like h2s. Once I had the bottom portion of my wine in a jug and it separated out but in two days it was the worst rotten egg smell you could imagine. That stuck with me and I've been scared of gross lees ever since

I don't know how you sleep at night sometimes James! LOL

derekjames100 said:

That stuck with me and I've been scared of gross lees ever since

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ibglowin said:

I don't know how you sleep at night sometimes James! LOL

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Your help has made it a little easier.[emoji6]

Dealing with H2S now I'm in James camp

I'm probably the least qualified to speak up, but I smelled my Malbec a few days into fermentation and it smelled, well, stressed but not eggy, so I added a dose of DAP (at1.030) and it smelled better immediately. Good luck blue.

I think you are more qualified than you give yourself credit. You've never made me turn down a wrong alley! +1 here, a little dab of Fermaid will do you. Unless your SG is like 1.010 or lower, then be careful about the amount you add, want it all used up so other nasties can't take advantage of it after fermentation is finished. I'm rethinking my usage, may run into issues with previously over dosed wines.