Too much Sulfite

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Kelbor
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Too much Sulfite

Post by Kelbor »

I way over sulfited some peach mash....stupid mistake. Waited a week, dropped a yeast bomb and out started rocking. Cap fell, strained it, let it somewhat clear and now it its a month later. Running it I'm getting a gnarly sulfer smell on the distillate. Am I screwed? Will out evaporate off at ask before I lose abv? This its a strip run I'm doing right now....

Thanks
OBX Phantom
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by OBX Phantom »

Do you have any copper in your vapor path? Copper will help remove sulfites.
If you are not living on the "Edge", then you are taking up too much space!!!
Kelbor
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by Kelbor »

Yeah, lots of copper. My boiler is a keg but its a copper pot still after that....I'm pretty bummed right now a it was thirty gallons of must with no sugar our water added. Made about 20 gallons of wine. I did not taste any sulfer in the must though.
Kelbor
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by Kelbor »

Damn, my last five gallon carboy does smell like fart!
heartcut
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by heartcut »

Stick some copper scrubbies in your column before you run it, that helps when distilling sulfited commercial wine. It might work. You don't need any sulfite (or sorbate) for must you're going to distill.
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Kelbor
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by Kelbor »

Yeah, I go either way. If I'm using natural year then of course no sulfate. With peaches and apples, o use a clean wine yeast so I kill all the other guys with dose. Wait 24 hours and drop my yeast. O was using a new product, to me, and way over did it-hence waiting a week to yeast it. Now I'm wondering if there are any other bone heads heads like me and what they did to fix it. Hate to dump 2.5 gallons I've got so far. :(
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by Prairiepiss »

I way over sulfited some peach mash
Why would you sulphite it anyway?
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Kelbor
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by Kelbor »

Yeah, I go either way. If I'm using natural year then of course no sulfate. With peaches and apples, o use a clean wine yeast so I kill all the other guys with dose. Wait 24 hours and drop my yeast. O was using a new product, to me, and way over did it-hence waiting a week to yeast it. Now I'm wondering if there are any other bone heads heads like me and what they did to fix it. Hate to dump 2.5 gallons I've got so far. :(
OBX Phantom
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by OBX Phantom »

I would try packing your column with more copper and do your spirit run on all of the product you get and see if it comes out better.... Don't forget to dilute it down to 40% or even lower, because the water that you dilute it with also acts as a filter.
If you are not living on the "Edge", then you are taking up too much space!!!
Mr Shine
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by Mr Shine »

If I was really worried about losing all that, I'd set the low wines aside for a while and pack the column with some copper scrubbies and make a few runs with them in. Then I'd cut the low wines with good water and run them slow with the copper scrubbies in the vapor path. Should help.

Have a friend that has a bunch of dinner parties with people bringing over crappy bottles of wine. He pot stills them all--funky sulfited ones and all--in his pot still with copper scrubbies and makes brandy out of them. Scrubbies seem to help.

Good luck. Should work for you.
Bagasso
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by Bagasso »

Here are instructions from a wine catalog on treating wine with copper:
If you are a traditionalist and you have a sulfur problem, you may want to use the tried-and-true copper addition.When exposed to copper, the sulfide combines with the copper to make copper sulfide, which is not soluble in wine. While some books will tell you to just run the wine over a sheet of copper, our experience has not found this technique highly effective. Instead, the direct addition of a small amount of 1% copper sulfate solution is usually quite effective. Add it at a rate of 3/4 of a milliliter (mL) for every gallon of wine. This will give you a maximum level of 0.5 ppm (mg/L), which is the level allowed in commercial wine. If you must treat the wine again to completely clear the sulfide aroma, you may want to remove residual copper by adding yeast hulls (at a rate of 5 grams per gallon), stirring frequently, and racking again in a few weeks. For the copper treatment alone, rack after a couple of days to leave the black copper sulfide behind (at part-per-million levels you may never see it, but it’s there!).
http://www.thebeveragepeople.com/pdf/we ... og2013.pdf

They also mention 2 comercial products called Reduless and Noblesse.
Kelbor
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by Kelbor »

I have also just considered running the piss out of it but really wanted to preserve the peach flavor...which is why I went with 100% fruit in the mash. Might have to chalk this one up to 'lesson learned' the hard way. Damn, That was a couple hundred pounds of peaches.... :thumbup:
Kelbor
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by Kelbor »

I sorry Prairie P, I meant that I used sodium metabisulfite powder (to kill the wild yeast - not for preservation like wine makers use it). Im used to using campden tables but this was a pure powder they had instead. It reads "combine a tsp. with an ounce of water" on the top line and then "Use one tsp. per gallon of must". I read it like "use a tsp. of the powder per gallon of must but premix it with an ounce of water per tsp. prior to mixing with the must". Ha. I should have apparently used a tsp. of the premixed one ounce solution I just made with only a single tsp. of powder....stupid instructions. That explains why the little pack did not go very far!

I found a few places that sell those two products (Reduless and Noblese) for very cheap...until you add in the shipping (like seven bucks to send $1.50 worth of powder). Im going to look local first. Im still a bit worried about my low wines though. I think the sulfur in them was eating my still alive. It appeared as if a metallic residue (both copper colored and silver) washed/wiped out of the still while I was cleaning it . I dont see anything in the low wines and my still is made with safe solder but poisoning myself aint worth it!
MDH
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by MDH »

There is, again, one thing you can do about this: If you still have the low wines sitting around, go out and find a product called "Root clear", or simply look for copper sulfate. React a warm solution of this with baking soda, filter this blue solid out in coffee filter papers several times with water to get rid of excess baking soda/sulfate. Then get "Acid blend" from a wine-making store and make a solution, react the blue solid (copper carbonate) with it until it stops reacting then decant the blue solution.

You can also take some copper sponge/packing and boil it for a long time in a solution of acid blend. Again take the blue liquid and add it to low wines, the sulfur smell will disappear.

This is basically organic copper salts; a very little bit will go a long way on dealing with sulfur issues when added to low wines and redistilled. I know some here consider this excessive, but in some cases a copper still is insufficient chemically (Or worse yet as shown here the still can be damaged by very large amounts of excess sulfur). I just hate to see "Several hundred pounds of pure peaches" go to waste because a peach eau de vie is comparable to nothing!
The still is not a liar. Mash and ferment quality is 99.9% of your performance.
bonehead
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by bonehead »

when i make hard cider i use campden tablets. i can get most of it out if i wan't in a refridgerator they will cristalize and fall to the bottom. i only use a lite dose to sterilize the juice though.
Kelbor
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by Kelbor »

Hi MDH,
I stopped myself from chucking the distillate. I went down to the local wine shop and got a light blue liquid that Im pretty sure is a copper sulfate (its at home right now so Im not sure exactly what it is called). I combined the five gallons of peach wine with all the low wines in a BOP and added this blue liquid. I was planning on letting sit for a few days (covered with a screen so it can off-gas any it wants to), and then re-racking it. Plans from there depended on the success of that blue liquid.

Is this the same stuff that adding a copper sulfate to a baking powder solution, filtering then dissolving with an acid blend is doing (or boiling a copper scrubby in acid)? My chemistry skills are not very well developed.

Thanks for all the help and feedback by the way!
Kelbor
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by Kelbor »

Aaaarghgh..This

"......because a peach eau de vie is comparable to nothing!"

is why this worth fighting for. That and next peach season is a whole year away!
EDragon
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by EDragon »

I'm trying to make some high ABV 'grappa' with commercial wine some friends gave me in my pot still. Most of the bottles say 'contain sulfites' (and all are cheap wine, so probably all of them do) - has there been any headway on this? Any other people that have had problems with sulfites? What did you do?

My pot still is stainless with no copper in the vapor path, would putting some copper mesh in it to boil when running the spirit runs help? Is there anything dangerous that might come out as long as I use copper that's real copper? Does it have to be food grade or can it be any copper (not sure if there's any difference on finish, etc)?

Also: will it just give the final spirit a sulfur flavor? Or could the amount of sulfur actually reach toxic levels? 16L of cheap wine that probably all contain sulfites. I've got the first liter of a stripping run sitting in my fridge (not much storage space otherwise for it at the moment) - someone was talking about decanting off the sulfites after other treatment, could this be done with just the sulfites alone or is there going to be more bonding/mixture without additional treatment?

another thing : I'm thinking of diluting down to 40% with water and doing a second stripping run to get up to higher ABV before final spirit run, will this help even if I don't use copper? Thanks!

Ug. I want to make this 'grappa'!
Bagasso
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Re: Too much Sulfite

Post by Bagasso »

EDragon wrote:My pot still is stainless with no copper in the vapor path, would putting some copper mesh in it to boil when running the spirit runs help? Is there anything dangerous that might come out as long as I use copper that's real copper? Does it have to be food grade or can it be any copper (not sure if there's any difference on finish, etc)?
Copper in the boiler will do. I would think that just about any copper would be alright. Unless you are burning plastic and rubber off of electrical wire I would think that copper is copper.

The results are copper sulfates and from the information I have found are solids, melting/boiling points over 1000º C, which means that they will stay in the pot.

The reason that there is a limit to the amount that can exist in wine is because wine doesn't go through a distillation process so whatever is placed in the wine ends up in the bottle.
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