Speidel plastic smell?

[M38A1]

I've run a dozen or more batches of wine, Dragon's Blood and SkeeterPee through my 60L Speidel, but this batch of strawberry is 'different' smelling. It smells like plastic and I wonder if I ruined the batch or the vessel.

Searched/read a couple threads on plastic smells and nothing seemed related to potential heat, but many on just a plastic smell.... Vessel was clean smelling and cleaned with StarSan prior to addition of ingredients.

Basically a DB variation using frozen strawberries, I mixed up my 10lbs of sugar via simple syrup. I let it cool only a little bit before dumping it in the fermenter. This time, the simple syrup went in first whereas before I've typically had a gallon or so of water already in there. I'm guessing the simple syrup was way too hot for the vessel? Speidel shows 140*F and if I were a betting man, this was up around the 175*F mark.

The weird part is, I don't recall the plastic smell after the addition of the ingredients, nor prior to yeast pitch - just smelled like strawberry jam. Only after active PF had begun 24 hours post-pitch did I notice the smell. (Yeast - EC-1118)

Is the heated simple syrup a good guess where this smell is coming from?
Do you think this smell will transfer to the product?
Have I ruined my vessel?
Other thoughts?

It's a batch a friend is making for her mom and I'm making her do all the steps herself. Ugh. Hope I've not screwed THIS one up.

Thanks in advance...
~m

 

[NorCal]

I’ve made hundreds of gallons using my Spiedels and have never smelled a plastic smell. I’ll be willing to bet you are smelling a byproduct of a fermentation that did not go well.

 

[M38A1]

I’ve made hundreds of gallons using my Spiedels and have never smelled a plastic smell. I’ll be willing to bet you are smelling a byproduct of a fermentation that did not go well.

Hundreds - Wow! Then again, I'm only in my second or third year of doing this stuff and have learned sooooooo much here.

What potential fermentation things have gone sideways? Is it a bacterial thing? Strawberries and their plastic bag? Bad yeast? One thing I now remember I did not do is run some K-Meta for that first 24hrs with the fruit. (DB doesn't call for it and none of my prior batches have had issues so I didn't do it this time either) Always try to do my best with clean hands, spoons, tools etc.

Help me understand the possibilities of what it could be....

And should I just start over now or let it run it's course to see what happens? I can always throw it out later than sooner.

Thx.
~m

 

[NorCal]

It would be my guess that you have some H2S going on. I have never made a strawberry wine, but I could imagine that it does not contain a lot of nutrient.

A way to see if this is the case is to take two samples out in wine glasses, one as the control, the second to see if you can get the H2S to blow off. You do this by aggressively racking it (put it in a closed container, shake the heck out of it, pour it out into the glass and let it breath, then repeat). Another option is to stir it with something with exposed copper. If the smell goes away, very good chance you have a case of H2S, that can be treated.

 

[M38A1]

Thank you! I'll try this evening and see what happens.
Do they make big copper spoons available at the local HBS?

 

[Johnd]

@M38A1 Found the same question in a wine blog dug up from the internet, the response to the plastic smell question was:

"The plastic-styrene smell is usually indicative of a particular strain of Brettanomyces,
also called Brett. It's an infection in the wine and in the winery. There are many different strains of Brett that have a range of smells like plastic, Band-Aids, barnyard, smoky-sweet, medicinal, concrete-y, etc. Brett is usually not a good sign, but the smoky-sweet type in small doses in some wines can be OK."

Also located an old thread from right here on WMT, you can view it at:

https://www.winemakingtalk.com/threads/plastic-smell-in-final-product.41556/

 

[M38A1]

Thanks all for the replies thus far.

NorCal
I've taken a sample to two pint mason jars (one control/one test) and shook the life out of the test one several times, let it breath and no discernible difference between the two. I'll try the penny thing later tonight.

John-
Thx for the articles. Read them both and they were interesting. Many of those smell attributes are what I'm picking up. Yet I also pick up strawberries which is confusing me and my nose.

I DID run a pH and it was 2.6 just now. But I recall that taking pH readings during active fermentation isn't anywhere near reliable. I think it was John that told me that???? Never thought to check it before PF either. Rather, just thinking "hey it's strawberries and the DB has worked so well for me I'll just go all in on them".

I'll know a bit more this evening late...

Again, thanks.

 

[M38A1]

So I had two different people take a whiff and they both said it smells like strawberry. I didn't tell them what I was brewing to taint their thought process. I asked if it smelled like plastic and they both said "no-strawberry...".

I'll let this run to dry, meta/sorbate it and see where it sits in about a week. I get a plastic strawberry smell myself, but I'm not sure if I'm just convincing myself it's strawberry or not.

 

[M38A1]

Update:
Ran this to dry and the closer it got the more strawberry it got while at the same time that plastic smell went away. Thinking a bit more about it, I'm leaning towards it being the strawberries.

Man it turned out BEAUTIFUL. A nice deep reddish with hints of orange. I'll rack/backsweeten this weekend and see where it takes me.