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Help - Sulfur smell in primary. Whte-Muscato

Here are the specific.

Grape wine - white - muscato.

Had grapes pressed at the location where we bought the grapes. Juice was poured into 5 gal carboys. 7 total. We added Camden tablets at the store 2

1/2 hours away. two to each carboy. When we got home, added yeast -Can't remember the name. "Something -Blanc" Topped with bubblers.

It has been 1 week. Primary appears complete, bubbling is very slow. Checked this weekend and each carboy has a sulfur smell. After reading the history files, it sounds as if there are several possible causes. Yeast, spray on grapes, not enough nutrients for the yeast, etc, How can you tell which is the cause. Can you tell by what stage it occurred in? Could it be from adding Camden tablets?

What is our options? Should we try yeast energizer or aerate and wait to see if that works?

Some suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

PS Reds (Merlot and Zin) smell fantastic. Pressed last night, and started secondary. Zin - Dark Dark red with a very fruity aroma. Ohh boy.

Reply to
Ourfamily
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Should we try yeast energizer or aerate and wait to

I'm not sure if my suggestions arre valid or not, and I'll be interested in what others say. Last year I had the same experience with batches of petite sirah, syrah, and zinfandel. I attributed it to poor nutients in the original grapes because otherwise I did exactly what I had been doing with dozens of batches of wine.

The first thing I did was I agitated the must to try to drive off the SO2. I then added extra nutients (the Wine Lab has a product called superfood, which I now add in small amounts to all of my grapes that I'm able to buy here on the east coast.

In each of the batches the smell persisted but to a lesser degree. Finally, when the secondary was completed, I treated with minute (really minute) amounts of CuSO4. This worked beautifully with the petite sirah and the syrah, but the zin was still smelly. At that point, I figured that the zin was a lost cause and into the crapper it went.

What do others think? Do you routinely pre-treat with nutients?

Lee

Reply to
LG1111

I do... the grower even told me this year that it was necessary this year. Unless one is dealing top quality fruit I don't know of any reason not to the recommended amount.

Reply to
Charles

Hi, Wen I first started making wine, I had a few batches that had that smell. After asking a few questions on this NG and reading articles, I went and bought some DAP ( diammonium sulfate). I now put that in EVERY batch of wine I make, and I am very pleased with the results. I havn't had any sulphur problem in any wine since.

Reply to
Roger

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