Greetings! :)

[gmcbroom]

Hello All,
I was born and live in Austin, Texas. I'll be using the name gmcbroom so please use that. I've made 3 batches of wine so far the first was a Chante from a kit which turned out drinkable yet very weak in alcoholic content. The second was a recipe for welches grape wine, I got from the internet somewhere (I forgot where and that was one broken pc ago). That batch was low in alcohol content and tasted like I'd added to much preservative I hope it gets better with age but only time will tell. The latest batch I am worried about. It's an Gala apple wine. Its the first wine I've ever made from real fruit in this case Gala apples I bought from the store and then juiced. I've had it in the glass carboy for over a year and racked it once. I was planning to rack it again today but when I moved it to a higher elevation it became cloudy and stinks of rotten eggs. Should I just throw out a years work or can it be salvaged?

gmcbroom

 

[Tom]

I'm willing to bet its oxidized. Was the airlock filled with water this whole time? You needed to have added stabilizing ingredients and every 3 month's 1/4tsp of potassium metabisulfite.
Taste it and get back

 

[Wade E]

This maybe salvageable. Have you been adding sulfites? When you moved it was there sediment on the bottom that you disturbed. As for the smell this maybe fixed buy first sulfiting it good annd adding some ascorbic acid also cause what you are about to do is add lots of 02 into your wine to rid this H2S problem. First thing after adding the above is to splash rack this wine a few times very aggresively from the carboy to a bucket a few times. after that stir it up very good with a sanitized copeer pipe a for a few minutes maye a few days in a row and see if that fixes it. As a last resort you can use copper sulfate but follow the directions very carefully as at the wrong dosage it is very poisonous.

 

[gmcbroom]

Thanks for responding. I aerated the wine and racked it a few times while adding Bisultfite. I also removed the sediment at the bottom of the carboy. The smell vanished after that. I hope that fix is permanent. Either way only time will tell.
gmcbroom

 

[Wade E]

It usually doesnt come back but if it does buy a small pce of copper piping for Home Depot, sanitize the pipe, and stir the wine with it for around 5 minutes a few times and should alleviate these problem forever.