Bad smell

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danroh

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First off I would like to say that makeing mead is new to me. About 10 years ago it was one of my first wines and all but one bottle blew corks so I never tried it again. I put together an 5 gal batch of mead last friday w/ sulfide and pitch the yeast the following day. The recipe called for a low SG which turned out to be 1.080. Fermentation took off on Sunday and stopped on tues. I checked the SG and it had fermented out. The smell was wonderful before ferm. but now has a Hydrogen sulfide ( rotten eggs) smell.
Any ideas?
 
I have not made mead before but recently I made a sauvignon blanc that had a wonder clean citrus smell, you could smell the grapefruit. I would occaisonally test the wine as it was clearing. One day, to my great surprise, I uncorked the carboy and smelled rotton egg (hydrogen sulfite). I immediately, racked the wine vigorously into another sanitized carboy. I continued racking 3 more times until I could not smell the odor. It worked! The odor is gone and the wine turned out beautifully.

With rotten egg odor:
1. You want to remove the odor quickly before it sets
2. Rack vigourously, meaning let the wine splash into the carboy (you want the air to push out the hydrogen sulfite). Normally you want to keep the air to a minimum.
3. Because all the air introduced during the vigorous racking go a little heavier on the SO2 (potassium metabisulfite). I did it at 100 ppm.
 

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