What is floating in my wine?

[Ahmannation]

Hi everyone. I am guessing/hoping these are tartrate crystals but I couldn't find a good picture similar to what I'm seeing to confirm!

These are in a 3 month old black chokeberry/aronia berry wine that tastes great and I'm getting ready to bottle. Just don't know if I can or should be filtering these out somehow as I'm primarily finding them in the top half of the carboy and they're not sinking! Wine is very clear otherwise.

Thank you!

 

[ibglowin]

Its it floating on top or just on the sides/bottom? Did you sulfite the wine? If not that would be the first order.

 

[Ahmannation]

It is almost exclusively on the upper half/top. I put in SOME k-meta over the last few months but probably not enough. I was hoping adding three tablets immediately before bottling would rectify that.

 

[ibglowin]

If you have stuff on top you may have something like Mycoderma (yeast infection) and I would not bottle the wine until you have that under control for sure. Normally around 4 grams of sulfite is required for 6 gallons of wine. Make sure you have enough sulfite and then I would hit the top with KMETA spray, make sure the wine is topped up to within an inch or two and then stopper it solidly and wait and watch for a few weeks. You may need to rack again at some point.

 

[Rice_Guy]

Choke cherry has dominant citric acid with some malic acid. NO tartrate therefore you will not have potassium bitartrate crystals.
I agree with @ibglowin treat with meta., , , it should filter out with cheese cloth.

 

[Ahmannation]

I should clarify - there is nothing on the top surface of the wine at all, totally clear. What I took pics of is all just beneath the surface and some halfway down from the top.

Problem is if I rack the wine again I'll have too much head space in the 3gal carboy... So was hoping I could treat with meta and bottle now that fermentation is done and wine is otherwise clear. And filter that stuff out due to its size.

 

[winemaker81]

You're using Campden tablets? Did you crush them to powder? One drawback of Campden is the need to grind them to powder.

 

[Ahmannation]

Yup. I did crush them to powder, but seeing now that I didn't put in nearly enough at each racking. Thinking the carbon dioxide emitted would be enough to inhibit "bad stuff"

I guess my question is, can I bottle this wine if I add the three crushed campden tablets (1 per gallon) and filter these floaty bits out? Theoretically that should stop anything unwanted from forming in the bottles... I don't want to make a bigger problem though.

 

[Rice_Guy]

You have a three month wine therefore you could treat this like a three month old kit, filter it as well as possible and sorbate and bottle. A normal kit would have a bentonite treatment along with the primary which may have pulled this out. It is worth while running a clarifier before filtering to see if it can be precipitated, bentonite (dual fine/ what do you have?) , , , with the tools I have the mini jet with a 5 micron would be tried, ,,, very small filters will blind so the other direction cheese cloth (soaked is sulphite sanitizer) is better than too small.

wine is a preservative system at pH 3.5 or less / 11 to 12% alcohol/ sugar fermented out to less than 1.000. ,,,, Your risk factors are not toxic but mainly related to air exposure (how much head space in the carboy? , , , , Again your risk is low if you had low pH and good alcohol. ( just will be cloudy) Do you know the current pH and gravity? Will you plan to back sweeten, ,,,, fresh sugar is a risk and needs sorbate.
The aronia I have looked at was pH 3.58/ 1.050: pH 3.62/ 1.049: pH 3.84/ 1.047: your probably good for pH but are better if it had some added acid. What was the starting gravity/ theoretical alcohol?

I didn’t note this before, ,,,, welcome to wine making talk