Dragon blood smells off

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Allison Gray

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I'm making dragons blood wine and it smells off. It smells slightly like bad fruit. I went by the original recipe but did 3lbs of fruit to 4 gallons of water and brought the gravity up to where is said 12% on the hydrometer. I started it on 9/1. It is still fermenting but not foaming, just little bubbles. Today I took out the fruit and racked it to secondary
 
I find with all my DB batches they can have different smells depending on what fruit or yeasts I use. I don't get to wigged out about it anymore and chalk it up to the fermentation process. As for the foaming decreasing, that's sort of normal. The little bubbles are most probably CO2 being released. If you recall, yeast + sugar = alcohol + CO2. That's just off-gassing and it's OK to help it along by vigorously stirring.

Can't help on the 12% hydrometer thing as I only go by Specific Gravity (SG) numbers for my starting and ending points.
 
Well, to be fair, wine more or less is rotting fruit. What yeast did you use? Can you describe the smell a bit more? Like rotten eggs, or like mold, or wet newspaper? Can you tell us what the SG was when you decided to remove the fruit and rack to secondary?
 
I used the ec-1118 I do believe. My hydrometer broke so I'm not sure on that. And idk.. Like a hint of bad fruit.. Idk how else to describe it
 
Virtually every batch of my DB regardless of fruit choice, fresh or frozen has fermented to dry in about seven or eight days. My house stays about 75 during the evening, and can run up to 80 during the day when I'm gone. (at least that's where my thermostat is set). Temperature plays a big part in how quickly that fermentation process will run so if you're cooler, it would probably take longer. My yeast of choice for DB has also been EC1118 simply due to it's characteristics to work in a ton of different must environments, so we're the same there.

I'll typically pull out the fruit bag once a day, squeeze it a bit and place it in a sanitized bowl. Then I'll vigorously stir the must to introduce oxygen and off-gas some CO2 in the process, then put the fruit bag back in the PF until the next day. When it's 'done', I'll let it sit three days to begin the settling process then rack it out of there to a clean sanitized carboy. Following the DB instructions seems to be bulletproof from my experience.

Oh - and about a day before you rack out of primary fermentation, mix up a batch of SkeeterPee lemonade! After you rack your DB, toss in your SkeeterPee Lemonade into the primary fermenter bucket, give it a good stir and start another batch of a lemon/whatever-you-just-made blend!

If your hydrometer broke, I'd hop on-line and order a couple more since that's an important tool IMO.

And washing your hands, the bowl, your utensils, hydrometer, siphon/tubing EVERY TIME in a sanitized like StarSan is critical to keep the nasty's away.

Sounds like its progressing. I'd just let it run it's course, squeeze the bag daily, stir it daily (really hard/backwards and it will foam) and see where it takes you. As I've always said "I can throw it out later than sooner if needed". :)
 

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