Could I be more ignorant of wine? No.

[Hamsterflu]

Hi. I bought stuff a year ago and made 5 gallons of wine from grape juice, apple juice, and honey. It was reeeeally interesting to watch it fermenting, but after it stopped I kinda lost interest and it sat in the bottle on the yeast for a year. I finally dump it off into plastic trays, washed out the big bottle, decided to finally add some Potassium bisulfate since I opened it for the first time in a year, and ended up almost killing myself from my reaction to sulfites in it! I thought I was going to suffocate! I took a Benedryl and suffered thru it until I fell asleep wondering if I was going to die in my sleep. By the way, I don't drink.... Anyway, I took a sample to a winemaking shop and the lady told me it smelled like Sherry and that was why it was amber colored, and that there was an extremely high amount of sulfites in it and I should throw it away. I added tablespoons of Potassium bisulfite to it (if a little is good, more is better...). And she sold me chemicals and yeast to make a better batch of wine. And now I am here.

 

[Green Mountains]

this reads pretty much like your other post about oxidation. You go into detail on a lot of areas but not as much on the details that could help us help you.

What kind of kit did you make? you started in glass carboy? How big is the carboy? What was your starting SG? Did you use an airlock? Did you fill the airlock? You say you lost interest in it for about a year. While this could be a great thing during aging process it's not the thing to do when first starting as the wine needs attention during the first month at the very least.

How about sanitation. How did you prepare the equipment that you used including the bottle before starting?

Answer these questions to the best of your ability and give us details on timelines as best you can. We'll try to help answer your questions.

 

[Tom]

Small wonder, you used TABLESPOONS??
1/4 tsp is all you needed. It would benifit yourself to read up on the steps in winemaking.

 

[xanxer82]

Small wonder, you used TABLESPOONS??
1/4 tsp is all you needed. It would benifit yourself to read up on the steps in winemaking.

This!!!! 1/4 teaspoon for up to 6 gallons of wine.