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Removing Preservatives from Molasses

Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2004 6:44 am
by Yttrium
I bought 5 gallons of feed molasses a while back in hopes of making rum but so far I've found that the only thing its good for is killing yeast. I've tried adding 300 ml of this molasses to a wash that was briskly fermenting and fermentation stopped within a few hours. Anyways, I was wondering if anyone else has tried removing or degrading yeast killing preservatives? I tried boiling the molasses to no avail. Unfortunately I don't know what preservative is in the molasses because the FDA doesn't require labeling on feed grade stuff. Any suggestions on how to remove the preservatives would be appreciated.

Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2004 8:25 am
by Fourway
It's probably just got a whole lot of sulpher in it.

Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 4:40 am
by leglessboot
I had a peach wine that had too much sulphur in it when fermentation was complete. This is because I had preserved the peach juice with metabisulpite. The result was a rotten eggs smell.

I tackled the problem by adding MORE metabisulphite. This precipitated out the sulpur that was causing the bad smell. Still some smell so I added some copper to the wine - short lengths of copper pipe - and within a few hours the smell had gone completely.

Not quite the same problem as yours but the copper might work. I wouldn't add more metabisulphite because it's a different problem. When I have had a similar fermentation problem due to too many preservatives, usually potassium sorbate, I have started the fermentaion again with just the sugar element and once fermenting vigorously I added the rest of it a litre at a time. That way the yeast was able to overcome the preservatives.