Stupid Mistake - Throw away or not?

Throw it away, man!

Toss it

Listen to your wife as long as she agrees to be the taste tester. And serve it to your in-laws to see what happens before you drink any yourself. If your in-laws get sick, send me a bottle or two.

More seriously I suggest you call the manufacturer to determine the health effects of the contents of the sanitizer.

Dick

It's done for, toss it.

The chlorine has permanently reacted with the molecules of the fruit & honey, and will never evaporate or dissipate. In a pool, much of the chlorine exists as a dissolved gas and can escape into the air, but in your batch, there was a lot of things for it to combine with.

Wine can recover from almost anything. Very forgiving. But not Clorox. If you use Clorox to clean and sterilize things you should not only toss it and rinse thoroughly, but you should let it dry completely to get rid of the last traces of Clorox. Even at levels of parts per trillion, it can ruin wine. Traces left in cork has ruined many commercial wines.

Ray

You are 100% correct with regards to Clorox. However, TRex is referring to chlorine. (see below)

You are right. I got his source wrong. But Cl is the active ingredient in Clorox.

Ray

Chlorine is NOT the active ingredient in bleach. Chlorine Cl2 is a very toxic green gas and there is no way he was using that to sanitize hsi equipment.

Sodium hypochlorite is the active ingredient in bleach. NaOCl. This can be removed from water by the addition of metabisulfite and then allowing it to sit overnight. Next time rinse your carboy out with metabisulfite after your bleach solution, or do not use the bleach at all. It really is not necessary for wine.

I would add meatbisulfite to the wine and let it ferment out. You already paid for everything, you might as well taste the effects.

Okay, but in neutral or acidic sol'n, you've got an equilibrium occuring: OCl- + Cl- + 2H+ H2O + Cl2

The fact that he added his solution as sodium hypochlorite (made by simply dissolving chlorine gas in sodium hydroxide solution) rather than chlorine gas is irrelevant.

That is not how bleach works.

"Mechanism of action Like all hypochlorites, sodium hypochlorite is a salt of hypochlorous acid, HClO. Sodium Hypochlorite is a colorless, transparent liquid. In water, it partially splits into the sodium cation Na+ and the hypochlorite anion ClO-, while a substantial portion hydrolyses into sodium hydroxide and hypochlorous acid. The oxidizing power of the latter and of the hypochlorite anion cause the bleaching effect. Its negative charge, however, prevents it from diffusing through the cell walls of bacteria and microbes, making it a poor disinfectant. However the hypochlorous acid molecules that exist in equilibrium with the hypochlorite anion, due to their neutral charge and small size, easily diffuse through the cell walls of bacteria. This changes the oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) of the cell, and inactivates the enzyme triosephosphate dehydrogenase. Triosephosphate dehydrogenase (or glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase/GAPDH) is essential for the digestion of glucose, but is particularly sensitive to oxidising agents. Its inactivation effectively destroys the micro-organism's ability to function."

What you should have said is that chlorine gas, upon reaction with water forms hypochlorous acid, and in taht way acts the same as bleach. My point was that if you are not sure of the chemisty behind a chemicals mode of action, critiquing it is not what you should be worried about.

Are you saying that ionic Cl- from clorox is not something to worry about? I think I will.

actually it is not. ionized chlorine is completly innoculous. What do you think happens to salt, NaCl when you eat it? Na+ and Cl-

Sodium Hypochlorite (AKA Chlorine Bleach) has been positively linked to the formation of TCA which is certainly not innocuous.

I'm not sure what innoculous means.

Andy

It was a typo. And I did not say that sodium hypochlorite was innocuous, I said that ionized chlorine was. Please read all of the thread before jumping in to contradict everything I post.

I've read the whole thread and you're giving people the impression that adding chlorine bleach to wine is a safe practice. Just because you throw around some technical jargon that really doesn't have anything to do with the original question, doesn't make you any more correct.

I never said anything about what you said. I just said TCA is not innocuous.

Do you think that adding sodium hypochlorite (AKA Chlorine bleach, Clorox) to wine is harmfull?

Andy

Read again. Or don't.

I never said that it would not hurt wine. Again, if you follow the thread, the "technical jargon" I "threw" around was not in response to the original question, but to the misunderstanding in the mechanism of action of hypochlirite bleach. The way the topic is reading, someone might get the "impression" that adding calcium cloride salt will destroy their wine, or just as bad, act as a sanitizer. I mean, it has chlorine in it dosen't it?

I certainly did not set the impression that Droopy or anyone thought "adding chlorine bleach to wine is a safe practice". In the early stage of this thread, Droopy presumed that Cl was being used as an abbreviattion for Clorox and was advocating dumping the must. When I clearly replied that I agreed with him that if the sanitizer were to contain Clorox, the must should be dumped, but if the Cl stood for Cloride, the must was worth fementing out. Droopy replied his agreement.

He definitely wrote that early on in the thread.

Dick

Four people told the OP to toss it. He left 1.5 gallons of Chlorine based sanitizing solution in there and brought it up to 6 gallons.

The two of you started to argue about side issues and Droopy at one point said "I would add meatbisulfite to the wine and let it ferment out. You already paid for everything, you might as well taste the effects."

This could give some people the wrong impression. The four people that said dump it gave sound advise. Why did you continue to argue with them?

Dick, you said "You are 100% correct with regards to Clorox. However, TRex is referring to chlorine. (see below)"

This could give people the impression that chlorine is ok.

I just wanted to make it clear that no one believes that adding 1.5 gallons of chlorine based sanitizing solution to 6 gallons of wine is safe. It should be dumped and quickly.

Do you two agree?

A one word answer will suffice, agree or disagree, so we can let this stupid thread drop.

Andy

As far as being safe or not, No I would not say it is unsafe. As a matter of fact, it is advised to use chlorine bleach to disenfect water of unknown origin that cannot be boiled. A 1 ml solution of 1% bleach can disenfect a quart of water...not kowing the volume of his 0.8% package, it is tough to know how much bleach was in it, but since the working strength solution got dilluted 4 fold I am thinking that it would end up safe to drink after fermentation. And if it was unsafe to drink after fermentation....guess what?

It would not have fermented in the first place!!!

The only reason I said to treat it with metabisulfite and ferment it is because you really will not know the effects until you do. It could have been that he did add enough meta to treat the water before it could react with wine chemicals. The meta/hypochlorite reaction is very fast...faster then the reaction of chlorine to wine phenolics. It might, despite everyones objections actually turn out ok. Worse case scenario, it will taste like someone washed bandaids in it and he can dump it then. But since he already paid for everything, it really does not hurt to try.