Brett, bung, mercaptans

[tingo]

Brett, bung taste, and mercaptans can all have a taste aroma of rubber. They say mercaptans are "burnt" rubber and brett is bandaid but im putting this up for debate, how can you tell which is which? I know the penny trick for Sulfide and I know brett hates S02 but nonetheless i had a wine end up with bung taste and panicked about brett. So I got to thinking......

 

[jensmith]

Try easiest fix first. Work your way up to the most drastic measures. Whichever fix works will tell you what the problem was don't forget to factore in time when trying fixes!

 

[Turock]

Well, I'm not totally strong in this area so others can chime in. But mercaptans come from unresolved H2S issues. If you don't treat the H2S, then mercaptans form.

Brett is a yeast. It has a rubber or horse, or stable aroma to it. There is a product called No Brett Inside that is used to prevent Brett in grapes suspected of it. But knowing this beforehand--not sure how to figure that out because I don't work with grapes where that yeast is a problem. More reading would probably be good--Googleing something like this will probably give you some insight.

 

[Runningwolf]

If it is H2S I would treat it with copper asap to get rid of it as it'll only get a lot worse. Rack it off of the lees and then treat. You can get very small quatities of this at Presque Isle Wine Cellars.

 

[Turock]

Dan, he's questioning how to decide if the taste is from Brett,mercaptans, or the bung. You work in this industry--maybe you have more insight on knowing if Brett is the problem. I've never encountered it.

 

[Runningwolf]

Brett to me smells like a brand new pair of leather shoes. Band-aid is another aroma. It doesn't always smell exactly the same. Like someone else posted not knowing for sure exactly what it is, the first thing I would do is rule out H2S with a simple copper test on a 100ml sample.