Dandelion Wine Stinks....very badly

[agdodge4x4]

I followed one of jack keller's recipes for Dandelion wine, which followed a few recipes I found here. I strained it off and put it in a carboy for fermentation immediately as per the directions. It is fermenting well, but it smells...bad. It has am extremely strong sulfur smell coming out of the airlock.

I think I should have followed my gut and fermented it in a covered un-airlocked primary until 1010 or 1005 and then put it in the secondary.

I did not do this. It went directly into a glass carboy with its starter solution and immediately placed under air lock. I used cotes des blancs yeast and started it at 1085.

Can I save it still? If so...how?

 

[Luc]

If you would have said stink like boiled spinach or boiled gras I would have agreed. That's the way dandelion wine smells in the beginning.

However sulphur........
Something else is going on.

PPost your recipe and method so we can examine.

Luc

 

[Deezil]

What kind of solution do you have in the airlock? Is it possible you're just smelling that? Did you add nutrient / energizer to the batch of wine? How about aerating it?

 

[Julie]

What is your reading now? If your reading is still pretty high, I think you need to put this into a primary and like Deezil said aerate it.

 

[agdodge4x4]

Dandelion Wine (2)


* 2 qts dandelion flowers
* 3 lbs granulated sugar
* 4 oranges
* 1 gallon water
* yeast and nutrient


This is the traditional "Midday Dandelion Wine" of old, named because the flowers must be picked at midday when they are fully open. Pick the flowers and bring into the kitchen. Set one gallon of water to boil. While it heats up to a boil, remove as much of the green material from the flower heads as possible (the original recipe calls for two quarts of petals only, but this will work as long as you end up with two quarts of prepared flowers). Pour the boiling water over the flowers, cover with cloth, and leave to steep for two days. Do not exceed two days. Pour the mixture back into a pot and bring to a boil. Add the peelings from the four oranges (again, no white pith) and boil for ten minutes. Strain through a muslin cloth or bag onto a crock or plastic pail containing the sugar, stirring to dissolve. When cool, add the juice of the oranges, the yeast and yeast nutrient. Pour into secondary fermentation vessel, fit fermentation trap, and allow to ferment completely. Rack and bottle when wine clears and again when no more lees form for 60 days. Allow it to age six months in the bottle before tasting, but a year will improve it vastly. This wine has less body than the first recipe produces, but every bit as much flavor (some say more!).

This is the recipe. I followed it exactly, except that I added a campden tablet in the beginning.

The smell is coming from the wine itself. It smells like a fart....far stronger than anything I have ever smelled in my wines before. I wonder if splash racking it will help? I am not sure what the reading is. I can check tonight, but I havent had time to mess with it so its been fermenting for a couple of weeks. It nearly finished fermenting now.

 

[agdodge4x4]

The wine is at 992....i had to rack it. The smell was too much. I racked it off the gross lees and into a clean carboy and air locked it. It was splash racked. It may have just been degassing, I don't know. Either way, its racked.

Any other advice for here on out?

 

[sly22guy]

You can splash rack it again if it still smells. Also you can use a piece of sanitized copper wire to swirl through it, but don't leave it in there too long.