I'm totally stumped

I bought a Vintner's Reserve Beaujolais. OG 1.076, FG .0090. I fermented and secondaried in 7 gal buckets. I followed all instructions to the letter except omitting the sorbate. I stirred well when I added the chitosan and sulphite.

I am due to bottle soon so I snuck a peak today to see if it had cleared and there is a fine "curd" covering the top of the wine. It wasn't there before I added the sulphite, etc. There was a very large head of foam on the wine when I covered it up after adding the remaining chem's. The wine itself is full of suspended particles. I looks like the wine has coagulated. It tastes okay. I'm stumped as to what this is and what I can do about it. Please give me your thoughts on how to save this batch.

You are in luck. snipped-for-privacy@charter.net is having the same problem. If he gets an answer, you're all set!

Secondary in 7 gallon buckets? You also indicate you can't see it without lifiting the lid, so its still in buckets?

tg

Yes, it's still in a bucket. Any thoughts?

Yep. My thought is that you need to run right out and buy yourself a

6-gallon (US) carboy and an airlock, if you expect to have any chance to salvage that wine. It may already be too late. If it smells at all like vinegar, I'd say you're out of luck.

If you have a lot of stuff suspended in the wine, along with crud floating on top, you are nowhere near ready to bottle, regardless of what the calendar says.

Get the wine into a carboy with an airlock, and give it a month to settle.

Doug

I did also contact Winexpert. They replied (quickly, thank you) and said it's likely a surface mold, harmless and can be scooped off. I think I'll rack to a 5 gal carboy and let it age. Any other thoughts, advice will help. To me it tastes ok and they say it won't harm the taste. I'll let it sit for a while and taste it again before bottling.

If the wine has that much surface mold you can bet that it _doesn't_ taste OK.

Your mistake was racking into an open top bucket instead of a carboy with an airlock on it. Even if that bucket has an airlock, those lids don't seal effectively enough to keep air out. When the wine has easy access to air, a large surface area exposed and no active fermentation generating CO2 you're basically throwing a party for spoilage organisms.

You'll know and do better next time.

Tom S

thoughts,

I just racked it into a 5 gal carboy from my bucket. The bucket has a spigot and I left behind a gallon with the mold on top. It looks clear as a bell. I added 3 crushed campden tabs as well. I think it tastes ok, they assure me it won't hurt the taste. I assumed that when I degassed that the large head on top (about a gallons worth of head) would protect it, but later that day I saw that I hadn't gotten the lid snapped down all the way around the bucket. I think that it will be ok. I will buy a bottle of Beaujolais and compare it to see if it's salvagable. If it goes to h#** then I at least saved myself the trouble of bottling. I like buckets because of the spigot and that's why I used them. Next time I'll use a carboy. Question: did leaving out the sorbate contribute to this in any way?

Question: did leaving out the sorbate contribute to this in any way?

Nope. Sorbate is only added to prevent renewed fermentation in the bottle, in the event that there is any residual sugar left at that point. Normally there isn't. If there is some sugar left, and a few yeast cells manage to make it into the bottle and ferment that remaining sugar, you can get dangerously high pressure building up in the bottle. This results in what are sometimes called "bottle bombs", which sounds funny but can be pretty serious. Regular wine bottles are just not designed to handle pressure like that. Adding sorbate (and some pot. meta to keep the SO2 levels up) prevents any stray yeast cells from reproducing, which means the yeast population can't build up enough to ferment that remaining sugar and cause a problem. A lot of experienced winemakers skip the sorbate, if they are sure there is no residual sugar. The kitmakers generally recommend adding it to every kit before bottling, just to be on the safe side.

Doug

bombs",

My OG was 1.076 and my FG was .0990 so I felt safe leaving the sorbate out and also I've heard it's pretty sickly sweet.

No. In fact, there's no reason to add sorbate to any dry wine, and ample reason not to.

Tom S

You are such a FA, Ken. ;-)

Brian

I vote he flushes the whole lot down the loo instantly.