Help - deposits in Strawberry wine

[TyYoda]

I have a 20 gallon batch of strawberry wine that I bottled in May of 2021 that is showing deposits at the top of the wine in the neck of the bottle - please see pictures. I'm seeing these deposits in both the regular strawberry wine and in the strawberry wine that I made into chocolate strawberry wine.

I didn't notice the deposits until about a year plus after being bottled. I've made over 1,000 bottles of wine and I've never seen this before. I've also I made this particular strawberry wine recipe a couple of times before and didn't have these deposits. I checked my detailed records and didn't do anything different than what I typically do.

Any ideas on what are the deposits?

I was thinking about dumping and filtering the 3 cases of wine that I have left into a carboy and then using Dualfine to clarify out any deposits that may remain.

Thoughts?

​

 

[Ohio Bob]

Judging from the lines I’m guessing these bottles were not stored on their side?

 

[BigDaveK]

I agree with @Ohio Bob - my first thought is they were stored upright. Which leads to my second thought, evaporation.

 

[Ohio Bob]

Perhaps we can determine the age of the wine by counting the rings!

The rings appear to be white, so I suspect Kmeta/sorbate insufficiently mixed into the wine at bottling. Can you give more detail on how long the ferment was, your bottling process?

 

[TyYoda]

I tasted the wine and it has changed and it is no longer good. Wine will be dumped.

My process is sound. Primary is typically less than 10 day, then I rack to secondary carboys and rack every 2 to 4 months. I add pot meta every other racking and I use one way vacuum valves for air locks. For bottling I add sorbate and back sweeten in the carbon using 1:1 simple syrup to taste and then I let the wine sit for 2-4 weeks and then adjust the back sweetening as needed. Pot meta is added before bottling. Both pot meta and sorbate amounts are per packaging directions. I bottle using a homemade all in wine type vacuum system and I’m really particular about sanitation. I make beer also and have not ever had any sanitation issues that I’m aware of.

I appreciate the help. This is a weird outlier that I have not seen before out of over 30 batches of wine. Clearly this might have been user error.

 

[BigDaveK]

I use a 2:1 simple syrup, less water, personal preference.

Also, everything I've read says the sorbate and kmeta work as a team and should be added close together timewise. Sorry, I don't have a source on hand to back that up.

Good luck next time!

 

[ChuckD]

Was this from concentrate or fruit? Is it vinegary?

 

[StimVino]

Have you considered that this could be a cork issue? Are you using #8’s or #9’s? Were the corks in storage prior to use?

 

[Rice_Guy]

I tasted the wine and it has changed and it is no longer good. Wine will be dumped.

The appearance is that you have an aerobic film forming organism. Some also is climbing up the neck of the bottle so I would wonder if there is breathing through the cork. There are some film forming yeast and there is Acetobacter which is bacteria. (Is the off flavor vinegar? barnyard?) A microscope could be used to look at cell morphology/ cell size to get a better idea.
Flavor is always a good indicator of spoilage.

Next time, * do you have a pH reading? Low pH as 2.8 to 3.2 will have better micro stability. Sorbate works on yeast but not bacteria. Sulphite will kill bacteria, but again what pH, it works better at 2.8.
*Synthetic corks give a tighter seal, consider switching to synthetic. Natural cork has variation from unit to unit, if microbial some of the bottles should be clean.
* An infection is a numbers game. Organism are in the environment and on every roll of the dice you have risk. To reduce risk to close to zero a factory would filter with a 0.45 micron absolute filter.
*Alcohol is a preservative, the higher the ABV the better the stability.
* CO2 is a preservative, I have check valves but try to not degas till the week I bottle.

 

[joeswine]

I have a 20 gallon batch of strawberry wine that I bottled in May of 2021 that is showing deposits at the top of the wine in the neck of the bottle - please see pictures. I'm seeing these deposits in both the regular strawberry wine and in the strawberry wine that I made into chocolate strawberry wine.

I didn't notice the deposits until about a year plus after being bottled. I've made over 1,000 bottles of wine and I've never seen this before. I've also I made this particular strawberry wine recipe a couple of times before and didn't have these deposits. I checked my detailed records and didn't do anything different than what I typically do.

Any ideas on what are the deposits?

I was thinking about dumping and filtering the 3 cases of wine that I have left into a carboy and then using Dualfine to clarify out any deposits that may remain.

Thoughts?

​

Flower of roses ?? Baxter