Hydrogen Sulfide in Apple Ferment Destined For Brandy

[Wannabee]

Afternoon, first time poster and long, long-time lurker. Hope this is the correct forum and sorry if too much info:

BACKGROUND
I'm fermenting 17-18 gallons of a 5-apple variety. I sourced 6 1/2 bushels of apples from a local farm and got a kickass yield of 21+ gallons from my homemade disposal scratter and HF 20T rack and cloth press. Juice was approx 1.046. No Ph reading. About 3/4 tsp Pottasium Sulfite ( I know, I know). After 24hrs, pitched with 4 packs of 1118 and Pectin per mfg instructions.

FERMENTATION
An angry open ferment for 3 days in a 30 gallon blue container. On the 3rd day, covered with addition of blowoff tube. Also on 3rd day noticed strong Hydrogen Sulfide odor - not Sulfite, odor. Aeration helped a little. 4th day below 1.00 so racked into 3 glass carboys for secondary. By the micro bubbles, it's probably going through malo-lactic ferm right now. Hydro odor did not dissapate.

SOLUTION and PREVENTION
There are countless suggestions to be found including 1% copper sulfate solution, splash racking, time, copper wire, copper parts.

My favorite suggestion from a HD poster suggested copper scrubbies stirrred in plus adding a new ferment. Seeing as I need a tannin apple (Arkansas Black) which are due to harvest soon, I think this sounds like a great solution to blend this prior to fermentation and allow gas to blow off. Thoughts?

Could I have prevented this with yeast nutrients. Followed Cranky's recipe which suggests little chemical intervention.

Thanks in advance and for the countless posts over the past 14 months.

[NormandieStill]

You might want to read this. It documents my similar experience and the somewhat violent solution I ended up using.

TL;DR: You can start by dumping some copper into the wash. I used an offcut of copper pipe which sat in there until I was ready to run, and then sat in the boiler during the run. Worst case you can do some magic trickery with hydrogen peroxide although it will scare some folks. I used it on low wines. Maybe try stripping first before treating with chemicals to see how necessary it is.

[Wannabee]

Thanks Normandie! I don't know how I missed that post. BTW, heading to your namesake region next year. Looking forward to a lot of Calvados.

I forgot to mention that I'll be running an all copper rig with thumper. So I'm not sure if that substitutes the copper in the wash. But I do want to rack off some for hard cider so may try it in a small amount. I'll be re-reading your post a few times to set up a plan. I'm stilled bummed as I made fresh-stompped wine for 10 years and never had a bad fermentation.

[jonnys_spirit]

Hydrogen Sulfide remediation product:
https://www.lallemandwine.com/en/united ... s/reduless

You can use cooper or similar but it’s hard to measure. Copper in your still is always helpful.

Nutrients during ferment are a good preventive practice. Fermaid O/K.

Cheers,
jonny

[Dr Griz]

Maybe try stripping first before treating with chemicals to see how necessary it is.

This. My own apple brandy ferment last year was pretty unhappy (too many temperature fluctuations and jostling, and I think I may have accidently added too little nutrient) -- it had a pretty unsettling sulphur odor that didn't seem to go away with extra time. Eventually, I just shrugged and ran it anyway -- the copper mesh in my vapor path was a mess, but the low wines had lost their stink. And there was no noticeable discoloration of the copper during the spirit run.

I just decanted some off the oak a month ago, and it was very nice.

[NZChris]

Have a look at this research.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 0450.x/pdf