dandelion wine, smells like farts (lol, no seriously)

[jdriver84]

So I just re-rackedmy dandelionwine as was outlined by my recipe as closely as i could manage. I had toleaveit for 10 day slonger before re-racking due to working ont he road and no being hoem to take care of things. Wow what a smell! It doesn't seem to have soured or anything, but the smell is just like, well, a fart.

I did some googling and found that alot of people seem to be wondering this., but no one seemd to have a reasonable answer. My wine is at about 5 weeks now. Just reracked it and took out the sediment. Is this normal for this stage? Is there an issue that could be taking place I haven't accounted for?

 

[Racer]

Would rotten egg smell be another good description of the smell? If so you need to try to splash rack the wine to help drive the smell out before you do end up with a condition in the wine that is hard to treat and correct.

 

[jdriver84]

Rotten eggs could fit the description yes. I'll look into splash racking.

 

[winemaker_3352]

Welcome aboard!!

It sounds like a case of HS2.

Give a few good splash rackings - that should help aerate the wine.

 

[jet]

Search for "hydrogen sulfide", and you find more hits than you know what to do with.

Splash racking is a viable fix, provided the problem is not too advanced. Best of luck.

 

[semiller1982]

I am in the process of making a batch of sparkling dandelion wine and I just opened my first tester. Clarity and carbonation are perfect, but it definitely has the smell you describe. I was brave enough to taste it. I figured - I'll eat blue cheese, why not give this a try? The flavor is actually excellent although it leaves that same cheese aftertaste you might expect from blue cheese. It is too late in this instance (being sparkling) to try any changes or splash racking at this point, but I figure I'll let it condition longer and see what happens. Worst case scenario is that I'll end up with a very pungent smelling, but delicious sparkling wine that I get to drink all on my own. The smell and fermented flavor does diminish after about an hour in open air so just decanting a flat wine may work in your case. I have had this experience when making cider before and additional racking time has helped, but this is kind of new territory for me. I'm going to continue conditioning for at least 3 months and hope that the off smell goes away because the taste is very good. It can't hurt I guess.

 

[robie]

I am in the process of making a batch of sparkling dandelion wine and I just opened my first tester. Clarity and carbonation are perfect, but it definitely has the smell you describe. I was brave enough to taste it. I figured - I'll eat blue cheese, why not give this a try? The flavor is actually excellent although it leaves that same cheese aftertaste you might expect from blue cheese. It is too late in this instance (being sparkling) to try any changes or splash racking at this point, but I figure I'll let it condition longer and see what happens. Worst case scenario is that I'll end up with a very pungent smelling, but delicious sparkling wine that I get to drink all on my own. The smell and fermented flavor does diminish after about an hour in open air so just decanting a flat wine may work in your case. I have had this experience when making cider before and additional racking time has helped, but this is kind of new territory for me. I'm going to continue conditioning for at least 3 months and hope that the off smell goes away because the taste is very good. It can't hurt I guess.

The smell will not go away o its own. The wine now contains H2S. Get rid of it and you get rid of the smell.
There is an additive you can buy called Reduless. It will resolve the H2S problem. You can also subject the wine to clean, sanitized copper to get rid of it. For small batches, use something like shinny pennies in the wine. You can buy a solid copper pot-scrubbing mesh at the grocery store and put it in the wine for a short time. Just make sure it is sanitized and clean.

 

[Catfish]

I've had 3 or 4 batches of Skeeter Pee do the same thing. Bad smell. Splash rack it into a bucket, then back into the carboy. The smell will go away in a day or two.

 

[g8keeper]

i know i go back to this quite often in a lot of my posts, but, back when i was with a brew club a number of years ago, a member of the club made a dandelion wine....it definitely was not one of the faves....it truly had an aroma i would not necessarily say was rotten eggs, per say so i wouldn't say it was necessarily h2s....in this instance i would have to say it smelled like a "dirty diaper"....lol..once you got past the arom, i don't think it had a bad initial taste, but good gawd, to me the aftertaste was not the most pleasant....the aftertaste actually reminded me of the aroma of the dandelion greens and what you would imagine they would taste like....a bit bitter and tasting somewhat grassy...this was my only experience with dandelion wine, and not necessarily something i feel adventurous enough to experience again...

 

[rhythmsteve]

My Dandelion batch from last year started off with that very same smell, you definitely do need to splash rack it a few times and introduce some O2 to the wine, Also, i have found that if you use (cleaned) copper wire, pipe, that soaks up a lot of the smell as well. From time to time i will get a slight whiff of it, but you need to remember that this wine will need a minimum of a year and a half to age and settle the mix down a little bit