bad wine (newbie)

Hi Norm

What kinds of wine are you making and is it becoming vinegar or is your wine sour?

Sour wine is due to high acid content. Cleanliness (or the lack thereof) will not cause your wine to be sour. High Total Acidity and/or low pH are the cause of a sour wine.

Vinegar is caused by acetobacteria. This bacteria requires oxygen to flourish. And if it is present then there are some problems with cleanliness.

How do you store your wine? How much headspace is there in your containers? These are the things that you'll need to determine first before we can figure out what is going on with your wine.

Regards

Frank

What kind of wine and how many batches have you made that have turned sour? Is this a kit wine or fresh fruits? Is the wine just young? How long have you aged it?

David

My take on this one is that he needs a new cleaner. I use chlorine bleach. It's cheap, it kills everything, period, and you can smell when you have rinsed it off enough..... Blobert<

-- "Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: WOW.... WHAT A RIDE !!! "

all hoses everything, carboy,

I have used "One Step" myself for two years and have never had an issue.

David

Thanks for helping!! I guess the wine is going sour on me, not really vinegar??? I started with a "kit" wine and then a juice concentrate wine. They just smelled "sour" after secondary fermentation. I top off to leave the 2 inch. head space recomended??? I even use bleach before "one seep" for cleaning. Our water is very hard, but I use reverse osmosis, oterwise our water is not drinkable. thanks again, I will not give up!!!

Norm

thank you, maybe I am not using the sulphites right... I was in the understanding that the campden was ok unless the wine was going to be aged for many years???

Hi Norm

I've never made a kit wine but kits are designed to make balanced wines. You say it smells sour. How does it taste? If it doesn't taste sour then it's probably not sour. When topping up I try to take the wine up to the bottom of the "knuckle" on a carboy.

As far as cleaning goes, why use bleach? There is a risk of contamination of TCA. Once the contamination happens it can't be fixed. Why play a game you can't win?

If you haven't purchased an acid test kit you should do so. It is inexpensive and will tell you the Total (titratable) Acidity of your wine. If you can afford it purchase a pH meter so that you will have that information, too. With these tools you will be able determine if there are problems and decide on a course of action.

Regards

Frank

Why play a game you can't win?

Frank, I'm not sure what you mean by "can't win." TCA is certainly a potential problem, and some wineries have had terrible problems caused by chlorine. On the other hand, bleach is cheap, readily available and hypochlorite kills everything a winemaker is interested in including spores. I have been cleaning winery floors since I was 14 (61 years). I have never experienced a TCA problem, so I continue to use it. I suppose I will have a catastrophic TCA problem one of these days, and then I will come over to your side of the fence. Regards, Lum Del Mar, California, USA

Hi Lum

What I mean by is once there is a contamination there is, unless I'm mistaken, no way to salvage the wine. My grandfather used bleach and (probably) never had a problem, either. But I figure why take the risk. I use soda ash and triple rinse. It's pretty cheap, too.

OTOH, is there proof that TCA production is a result of using bleach? Maybe I'm worrying about nothing.

Regards

Frank Greensburg, PA

Frank, A large amount of research has been done in the past few years, so I don't think there is any question about chlorine and TCA. You are right about sodium carbonate. It does a good job and is inexpensive. Lum Del Mar, California, USA