White/cream film

[ColemanM]

I had an RJS cab Zin Merlot that had that ring. I added Cabernet pressed grape skins to it. Had a horrible creamy slime at the top of the carboy. I kept sprinkling kmeta on top of it to no avail. Still tasted good so I hit it with the chitosan (I don't use clarifiers anymore) and that took care of it.

 

[biscmc]

Hello All: Longtime lurker, first-time poster.

I've been enjoying this hobby for about 3 years now, and have about 15 kits under my belt, 9 of which are currently bulk-aging up to the 2-year mark.

I experienced a very similar creamy white film on a WE LE Super Tuscan. I racked and hit it with K-Meta on at least 2 occasions and the film would keep returning. I thought the film was only on the surface, so I topped of the carboy with a similar wine and left 1" of headspace. Imagine my dismay when I racked again and I found this film was actually 6" deep. The film on the glass of the carboy was exactly as described in ldmack3's photos above. The wine smelled of sauerkraut and was ruined.

I am somewhat relieved that some of you have discovered that this issue may be due to excess proteins. Just as some of you have observed, I tried to get out as much juice / tannin as possible by squeezing the grape bag to excess.

A few days ago, a noticed a similar film developing on a CCS Yakima-Valley Merlot that had been in the secondary for 2 weeks. I racked it off the lees, added another dose of bentonite, and stirred well with a wine whip.

I'll give the wine a good stir every few days, and will see if that takes care of the problem. I'd rather not add the fining agents unless I absolutely have to.

I will let you all know how this works out.

 

[biscmc]

Finally, months later, and with a lot of experimentation, I have managed to take care of the above problem.

Racking, and hitting with large doses of K-meta did not solve the issue. The film kept returning.

Following the protein overload theory, I tried additional bentonite. While this pulled some solids out of the wine, it did not rectify the issue, and the film returned within a week.

I applied sorbate, hoping that it would make the environment unsuitable for anything to grow. The film returned.

Kieselsol managed to pull a few solids out of the wine, but didn't solve the problem.

In the end, Chitosan worked like a charm.

The unfortunate part of this learning experience was the excessive number of rackings that took place to accomplish this, which ultimately thinned the wine down to a point where it will be fairly thin on the palette. At least in the future I will not need to tip a kit gone sour down the sink again due to this issue.

 

[AZMDTed]

Thank you for following up and posting. Glad you figured out what works for you.