Topping Up With Sludge

[Dugger]

Not a very appealing title, I know!
I generally top up with wine and tend to need less topping up than I used to, but I recently tried topping up with some of the sludge left from racking. In a couple of kits, I needed only a cup or cup and a half and decided to add a bit of water to the sludge, swirl it and add it back for topping up.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm wondering if there are any negative effects from using the sludge? Also, perhaps this amounts to the same thing as just adding water, since most of the sludge will settle out again, but thought I'd seek your opinions on this.
Why would you even do this, you ask? Well, partly my Scottish frugality but mostly curiosity.

 

[djrockinsteve]

No please don't top off with sludge. That's dead yeast and other matter that will impart an off flavor to the wine. Use a cheap yet similar wine to top off or better yet, get various sizes of carboys so you won't need to top off.

Recently I didn't have enough to fill a 5 and 3 gallon carboy. I filled instead a 5, two 1 gallons and a 720ml bottle. All with airlocks.

 

[Dugger]

Yeah, I kinda expected that could be a concern, so I guess I won't do that again. Thanks.

 

[Wade E]

I agree with djsteve. The main reason we rack from bucket to carboy as soon as we do is to get our wine of all those initial solids and ded yeast. The new yeast will start canilizing the old yeast once there sugar supply starts to dim giving off nasty flavors and could cause an H2S problem as it stresses out. Plus all those hevy solids can spoil.