quater of a campden in the bottle?

I suspect you've been using too much sulfite, too early. Try sulfiting the wine for the first time _after_ fermentation, when the wine goes dry. Let all the browning that's going to happen, happen _early_. The brown stuff drops out with the spent yeast, and when you finally do add sulfite, the wine turns a pale greenish-yellow. At least that's what happens with grapes.

Tom S

That seems to fly in the face of everything I've read!

Paul, you should be using Campden (or the unadulterated potassium metabisulfite) during the entire winemaking process. Apple juice sucks up oxygen readily, so protecting it at the outset is very important.

Still, protecting it before bottling is better than not protecting it at all. But I would add the Campden to the bulk wine and then bottle it. The tablet needs to be crushed very finely (like flour) and then thoroughly dissolved in the wine. This takes a lot of stirring (best to dissolve the powder in a little warm water, do most of the stirring there, and add that to the wine) and you would only want to do that once (in bulk) as opposed to doing it X number of times for X bottles of wine.

Jack Keller, "The Winemaking Home Page"

Yeah, I know, but it works with grapes. (Notice my disclaimer at the end.) What would it cost you to try it though? Apple juice is pretty cheap, and so are sugar and yeast. Spend $5 on an experiment and see what happens. Be sure to post the results. :^)

Tom S