sharp smell - is it vinegar?

[bickerton]

I have now made 48 different batches of wine and nearly every one has a smell that when you stick your nose in the glass and sniff, hurts your nose. I am tempted to say its an acetic smell because it is similar to sniffing vinegar. The wines taste ok though although most are very dry 0.990 to 0.994. even if I add some sugar syrup to bring it to 0.000 it still tends to have the same sharp smell. a typical recipe would be as follows for 5 gallons.

2L Orange juice
2L Apple Juice
1L Pineapple juice
2 X 680g jars cherries in syrup
18L white grape juice
1tsp nutrient
2tsp citric acid
2tsp tartaric acid
2tsp malic acid
youngs red burgandy yeast or Lalvin ec-1118

I tend to use a bleach solution for sterilisation, I also add 1/4 tsp of sodium metabisulfide each time I rack. and put one campden tablet in each bottle.

Any ideas guys on how to avoid the smell?

[Duffbeer]

Sulphite overdose, 1 campbden tablet per bottle is waaaayyyyyy too much, 1 tablet per gallon (2 for long term storage is sufficient.

As well as overdosing with campden tablets you are alsso overdosing with neat sodium met which ideally should only be used as a 10% solution without any campden tablets.

[goldseal]

Agreed.

You may be able to get rid of the excess sulphite before drinking: decant into a jug and stir the heck out of it - aerate as much as possible. This should blow a lot of it out.

As Duff says, rule of thumb is 1 campden tablet per gallon EVERY OTHER racking.

A substitute for campden tablets is 10% sulphite solution, which is the best thing since sliced bread. See here for details how to make some:

http://www.winesathome.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=1561

[koomber]

What you are smelling is SO2 (sulfur dioxide). This is generated by the sulfite that has been added to the wine. The important thing to note is that there is a balance in the bottle between sulfite and SO2 that is more or less fixed and the system will try to keep it there. (This is a chemical equilibrium)

If you remove some SO2 the system will convert some sulfite to replace the missing SO2. So, by using a vacuvin to suck the SO2 containing air out of the wine, some of the sulfite will be converted into SO2. Eventually you will have removed all the SO2 and sulfite.

Obviously this might not be practical for 48 5 gallon batches.
The only way I can think of fixing this with a large volume of wine would be to bubble CO2 though the wine until the smell is gone. Wouldn't be easy, but it would fix the problem.

Hmmm.

[bickerton]

many thanks

Guys - much appreciated
I dont know where I read to add 1 crushed campden tablet to a bottle before corking, but i have been adding an uncrushed tablet to every bottle and wondering why they all have the same off smell. I should have guessed because my wine actually tasted quite good during the final racking process. I just assumed it was changing flavour in the bottle.

I am going to read a lot more about adding sulfites.

Many thanks for the advice. and I should have added that I only have 5 batches on the go at the moment, 2 of which have been bottled, so all is not lost! the rest has been consumed or given away (hic!)

[Cellar_Rat]

Also using bleach can also lead to problems. Better would a sulphite solution with citric acid.

[bickerton]

thanks again

Cellar Rat - I've never had any problems caused by using bleach and as I said have made nearly 50 batches. I rinse everything thoroughly and have a well established method, but I appreciate there is another way (sulphite solution).

As a follow up, I went home last night and shook 5 different bottles like mad, they were about 4/5ths full after a taste trial. The smell of sulphite, whilst it had not gone away, was greatly reduced. Many thanks to you guys, I wont be making that mistake again!

[koomber]

Also using bleach can also lead to problems. Better would a sulphite solution with citric acid.

Totally agree. Wine is pretty tough (with respect to infection) compared to say beer and sulfite with a pinch of citric

Bleach is insidious for clinging to things. Even thin bleach can be tough to rinse out. Your best bet if you have to use bleach (say for cleanign VERY dirty things) is to use the cheapest unscented bleach you can find. Not thickened. Rinse it VERY throughly then give it a blast of sulfite. The sulfite will neutralise any remaining bleach. If you can still smell sulfite after 10 minutes then you have neutralised all the bleach. Give it a rinse out again and it should be okay.

[texteditor]

For cleaning very dirty things use Oxyclean or one of it's variants from the pound shop, works best in hot water, do not use a scented version.
Rinse and then sanitise wiht sodium metabisulphite solution then no rinsing is required.
texteditor.