Oh Boy...Concord gone bad?

[chevyguy65]

Well... Mrs Chevy and I started our batch of Concord and everything smelled great until we just racked it after10 daysin secondary.I opened the carboy the smell surprised me!!!!

It has a boiled egg smell.after racking thesmellweakend, so we are hoping it was coming from the lees.


Does Montrachet yeast cause this odor? The lees seemed pretty firm on the bottom.


Waldo, does thishappen with your Muscadine?




Hope we didnt lose this batch

 

[grapeman]

It is hydrogen Sufide gas. Montrachet can form it if you leave too many solids in it. I would vigorously rack it to a clean carboy, being un-gentle with it. You can also take a spoon or mix-stir and give it a good stirring. It normally gets rid of it after a couplke times. If not let us know and there is something further we can have youy do.

 

[PeterZ]

Other remedies beyond driving it off (it gasses off like SO2) would be pretty drastic. A tiny bit of copper sulfate would do it. I would have to calculate how much would be needed for 6 gallons to yield a max of 0.2 ppm Cu in the wine. At that level you would neither see nor taste the CuSO4, but it would bind irreversibly with the H2S and precipitate out.

 

[bonvec]

I had this problem a couple of yrs ago and whipped the wine good but it ( the smell came back) my local wine store didn't have copper sulfate so I took a piece of copper pipe and smashedthe end down some to narrow the passage and then racked the wine thru this pipe twice. It worked and the smell never came back. Edited by: bonvec

 

[lockdude]

I have a copper racking tube for just such problems!

 

[grapeman]

Chevyguy, try the splash racking first. If it gets rid of the smell it should be OK. What the others say is what I was waiting to mention, because it should be a last resort. Don't use the copper unless it is needed.

 

[Waldo]

Chevy, I have experienced this once with my Muscadine and I did exactly as appleman is advising. Splash racking it a couple of times took care of the problem

 

[bonvec]

I forgot to mention if you do use copper you should rack again a day or two later somehow the copper reacts with the hydrogen and binds and settles to the bottom.