Hi All
A colleague at work gave me 3 buckets of shiraz grapes from his family's vineyard which is located in the Riverland here in South Australia about 3 weeks ago. The timing was a bit unexpected and I only had time to do some minimal research so I had to wing it as I went along - in doing so I have made several mistakes, the biggest being that I added far too much Potassium Metabisulfite to the must.
My colleague suggested that I try to make the wine as his father does by using natural yeast fermentation. I crushed the grapes and got a yield of 23 litres (just over 6 gallons) including the skins. I left it alone for about 4 days and took a hydrometer reading which had hardly moved. As it did not seem to be fermenting I decided to add Potassium Metabisulfite (as I noticed some mould on some of the grapes as I was crushing them) and then a commercial red wine yeast.
I sprinkled 3 teaspoons of K Meta directly on top of the 'grape skin cap' and then punched it down into the must. I went back to read the instructions I had been following and immediately noticed my error. I measured the weight of a teaspoon and it was about 4 grams.
I removed the skins straining them through cheesecloth and ended up with 18 litres (4.75 gallons) of juice. I then activated the yeast and added it. There were no signs of fermentation for the next two days (which is obviously to be expected). Following some previous threads on this forum I decided to splash rack the must like crazy to liberate the sulfite. In the two days after I added the yeast I splash racked probably four times each day (twice morning and night). On the third day the fermentation exploded and I got a hydrometer reading of under 1.000 about 4-5 days later which is obviously way too fast.
I then transferred to a demijohn with an airlock where it's sat for about two weeks. I added about 5 litres of a commercial Shiraz Cabernet cleanskin from another local region to fill the demijohn.
The wine actually tastes ok considering it obviously needs ageing (I've had very small sips) but there is a noticeable SO2 smell (I'm guessing this is from the extremely fast fermentation and higher levels of K Meta). I'd say that the SO2 smell is definitely noticeable but I wouldn't say it was overpowering.
So I guess my questions are:
1. Should I try and remove the smell by further racking and perhaps gently stirring the must using copper tubing? There's no way I'm adding Copper Sulphate after my K Meta error!
2. Is the wine going to be safe to drink? I have started research as to whether I can acquire a Sulfite test kit but so far it doesn't appear that they are easy to come by here in Australia (at least for the amateur home winemaker).
Any comments or queries would be greatly appreciated, I've already learnt so much from this forum.
A colleague at work gave me 3 buckets of shiraz grapes from his family's vineyard which is located in the Riverland here in South Australia about 3 weeks ago. The timing was a bit unexpected and I only had time to do some minimal research so I had to wing it as I went along - in doing so I have made several mistakes, the biggest being that I added far too much Potassium Metabisulfite to the must.
My colleague suggested that I try to make the wine as his father does by using natural yeast fermentation. I crushed the grapes and got a yield of 23 litres (just over 6 gallons) including the skins. I left it alone for about 4 days and took a hydrometer reading which had hardly moved. As it did not seem to be fermenting I decided to add Potassium Metabisulfite (as I noticed some mould on some of the grapes as I was crushing them) and then a commercial red wine yeast.
I sprinkled 3 teaspoons of K Meta directly on top of the 'grape skin cap' and then punched it down into the must. I went back to read the instructions I had been following and immediately noticed my error. I measured the weight of a teaspoon and it was about 4 grams.
I removed the skins straining them through cheesecloth and ended up with 18 litres (4.75 gallons) of juice. I then activated the yeast and added it. There were no signs of fermentation for the next two days (which is obviously to be expected). Following some previous threads on this forum I decided to splash rack the must like crazy to liberate the sulfite. In the two days after I added the yeast I splash racked probably four times each day (twice morning and night). On the third day the fermentation exploded and I got a hydrometer reading of under 1.000 about 4-5 days later which is obviously way too fast.
I then transferred to a demijohn with an airlock where it's sat for about two weeks. I added about 5 litres of a commercial Shiraz Cabernet cleanskin from another local region to fill the demijohn.
The wine actually tastes ok considering it obviously needs ageing (I've had very small sips) but there is a noticeable SO2 smell (I'm guessing this is from the extremely fast fermentation and higher levels of K Meta). I'd say that the SO2 smell is definitely noticeable but I wouldn't say it was overpowering.
So I guess my questions are:
1. Should I try and remove the smell by further racking and perhaps gently stirring the must using copper tubing? There's no way I'm adding Copper Sulphate after my K Meta error!
2. Is the wine going to be safe to drink? I have started research as to whether I can acquire a Sulfite test kit but so far it doesn't appear that they are easy to come by here in Australia (at least for the amateur home winemaker).
Any comments or queries would be greatly appreciated, I've already learnt so much from this forum.
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