RJS Super Tuscan - Skunky

[Swedeman]

Collective wisdom?

The habit of using copper tubing for wort chilling when making beer is common (pH 5,1-5,8). When you chill wort with a copper tubing the amount of released copper is below the threshold of what is toxic to yeast, otherwise your fermentation would fail. Even exposing a sour beer (pH 3,1-3,3) for 45 minutes with a copper chiller, has no impact on the fermentation. I have seen different data on what's the toxic level on copper for yeast in wort but it's believed to below what's considered acute toxic (puking) to humans.

The contact time if running it through a Brillo pad is way much shorter than for chilling wort...

And yes, sour_grapes, you're correct, it's the acid that dissolves the copper.

Having said this, I would be more concerned with people without proper knowledge and precise scales playing around with copper sulfate.

But taking everything into consideration, Reduless looks like the winner.

 

[stickman]

Years ago, a copper spigot might be used for racking a 225L barrel, but the surface area of a spigot is significantly less than a Brillo pad. Wine is highly corrosive to copper, and the final wine flavor is sensitive to excess copper, as copper is not selective and will also strip certain desirable sulfur compounds. Excess copper also catalyzes oxidation of the wine so expect a shorter shelf life if you use too much.

You really can't compare exposing copper to wort and wine, the wort doesn't pick up as much copper and also hasn't been fermented yet, so most of the copper that is picked up will be converted to copper sulfide and precipitate as a solid during fermentation.

If you have to use copper in wine, whatever method you use, it's best to be as precise as possible using the minimum needed to eliminate the offending odor.