How To Make Homemade Concord Wine

Posted on September 8, 2020 by AIH

I have about 2 gallons of homemade Concord grape juice in canning jars. This juice isn’t clear and contains pulp but doesn’t contain any preservatives. Can I make wine with this and if so how??

Name: Cindy
State: GA
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Hello Cindy,

Absolutely, you can make homemade concord wine with your canning jars of concord juice. I also wanted to take the time to provide an easy and delicious recipe for this wine below.

The first thing to understand is that in the case of making wine with concord as the fruit, you will want to use 100% juice to make the wine. No water will be added. So the most homemade wine you will be making with the concord wine recipe below is 2 gallons.

The second thing to understand is that the fact the juice is cloudy or has pulp in it is not a problem at all. In fact, it could be considered a good thing, as the pulp will allow you to get more body from the concord juice and into the wine. The cloudiness and pulp will clear just fine through the fermentation process.

How To Making Homemade Concord Wine
You will want to add to your 2 gallons of concord juice the following:

CONCORD WINE RECIPE:
1 Cup Cane Sugar
2 Tsps. Yeast Nutrient
1/4 Tsps. Pectic Enzyme
1/4 Tsp. Grape Tannin
2 Campden Tablets (crushed up)

Wait 24 hours. During this time keep your container of wine must covered with no more than a thin towel. On the next day you will add the wine yeast:

Wine Yeast Lalvin RC 212 (to be added 24 hours later)

The above is based on a 5 gallon concord wine recipe listed on our website:

Homemade Concord Wine Recipe (5 Gallons)

This above information on how to make homemade concord wine is enough to get you started, but to continue on you will want to follow the home wine making procedures at the following link, below. These directions assume you are dealing with fresh fruit, but that’s okay. You can still follow them for making your wine with just the concord juice:

How To Make Homemade Wine

Hope this information on making homemade concord wine helps you out. If you need more help, please contact us. And when it’s done, please let us know how your concord wine turns out!

Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Adding More Color To Wine

Posted on September 6, 2020 by AIH

Results when adding more color to wine. How can I give my red wine more color? I’m new at wine making.
Jerre M. — TN
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Hello Jerre,

Adding more color to your wine is something that is easy to do when you are making it. The color pigmentation mostly comes from the skin of the grape. To add more color you leave the skins in the fermentation longer. This can be done for up to 7 days for maximum color.

Time plays a dramatic role in the color of the wine. If the skins are not in the fermentation at all, you will get a pink or blush-colored wine. This small amount of color is from what is released into the juice while crushing the grapes. Leave the skins in the fermentation for three days, you might get a ruby-colored wine. Seven days, you could end up with a wine that has an inky-dark color.

Results will very as to the hue of the wine (red brick to purple), but this should give you some idea as to the role time and grape skins play in adding more color to a wine.

So far we have been talking about grapes, but the same can be applied to many fruits: blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, even strawberries, and others. All will contribute more color to the wine when left in the fermentation longer.

There is a tradeoff. Along with the color comes more tannin. This is the stuff that adds body and structure to the wine. For most wine drinkers this is considered to be a good thing. The wine will be bigger, bolder, more aromatic and typically more layered in its flavor profile.

The tradeoff comes in the amount of aging the wine will need before it starts to taste pleasant. In short, the more time the skin is in the fermentation, the more time the wine will need to age before its harshness starts to subside. Exactly how much time is something that will vary from one wine to the next, but suffice it to say that it may be several years for the darkest of wines while maybe only three to six months for a blush wine.

If you are referring to adding more color to a wine that has already been made, there’s not much you can do. You can try making another batch of the same wine, only with more color, and then blending the two before bottling. The second wine could even be made with next year’s grapes. Just let your first wine bulk age for a while.

If you ultimately like your wines sweet, you can experiment with adding Welch’s grape concentrate to sweeten the wine. This will also add more color to the wine. It will also add more fruit acid to the wine. You will need to be careful not to make the wine too acidic. It would not be a bad idea to use an acid test kit to keep track of how much acid is being added to the wine by the Welch’s grape concentrate. You will also need to add potassium sorbate to the wine, just like any other time you would sweeten the wine. This is to keep the wine from starting a renewed fermentation with the new sugars from the concentrate.

As you can start to see, adding more color to a wine is not all that cut and dry. There are other considerations that need to made as well. Do you really want to make a big wine that might not be drinkable until next year? Do you really want to make your wine sweet by adding Welch’s grape concentrate for color? There are always tradeoffs.

The only thing I can really say is color does not make the wine. It is only visual cue as to what to expect. There are excellent wines of all colors: light and dark.

Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus

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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

My Wine’s Fermenting Without Adding Any Yeast

Posted on September 3, 2020 by AIH

Why is my grape juice bubbling and I have not added my yeast yet.

Name: Jerry R.
State: PA
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Hello Jerry,

The simple answer is your juice is naturally fermenting because of wild yeast. This is why a wine will ferment without adding yeast, at all.

Yeast is everywhere: floating in the air, landing on plants and animals. It is ubiquitous to the nature in which we live. Your grape juice either picked up some wild yeast somewhere, or it started naturally fermenting from yeast that were on the grapes themselves.

Most of the time, vineyards selling fresh grape juice to home winemakers will treat it with sulfites such as potassium metabisulfite to destroy any of the wild yeast and to temporarily protect if from fermentation and spoilage. This would eliminate any chance of a wine fermentation occurring from the natural yeast that was on the grapes.

But there is still the issue of the wild yeast that is floating around. From the oranges sitting on the kitchen counter to the cat who just came inside for a little nap, the sources of yeast are many and unstoppable.

Once a few cells of the wild yeast make it to your wine juice, then it becomes party time. A wine fermentation will ignite with the natural yeast. Slowly, the yeast will start to consume the sugars and use that for energy to multiply themselves into a larger colony. As the colony becomes larger the growth will slow down and the focus will turn to the productions of alcohol. This is how a wine ferments without adding yeast.

What is described above is no different than what happens when you add a domesticated wine yeast. This begs the question, “why add yeast at all?” The answer is simple, with wild or natural yeast you never know what you are getting. Yeast is not just yeast. There are thousands of yeast strains, and with each strain are an endless number of varying mutations.

With a domesticated wine yeast: 1) you know what you are getting, 2) the strain is kept consistent, and 3) the strain has been bred for a specific characteristic, such as alcohol tolerance, flavor profile and such. Domesticated wine yeast pack more firmly on the bottom of the fermentation vessel as sediment so you can more easily rack the wine off of it. You may want to take a look at a wonderful article we have on the reasons you should use a domesticated wine yeast.

Now that you know your wine fermentation is from natural yeast. What should you do?

Fortunately, there is a simple remedy for such a situation. Wild or natural yeast are not very resilient to sulfites, and sulfite is the active ingredient in Campden tablets, potassium metabisulfite and sodium metabisulfite. All you need to do is add a dose of any one of the above, and the wild yeast will easily be destroyed and no more natural fermentation. Wait 24 hours, then add a domesticated wine yeast to the juice. During this 24 hour period you should leave the grape juice uncovered, or at most, covered with no more than a thin towel. This will allow the sulfur to release as a gas and dissipate. Once the domesticated wine yeast has been added, you should see a renewed fermentation start within 24 to 36 hours.

Having a wine ferment from natural yeast is not a horrible thing but it is something you’d prefer not to have. It’s like rolling the dice with Mother Nature. The important thing to understand is that a wine fermentation can occur without adding yeast, but there is something you can easily do about it.

Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus

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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

When To Move Your Wine To A Secondary Fermenter

Posted on September 1, 2020 by AIH

I have a couple of questions about using the hydrometer and when to move your wine to a secondary fermenter from primary fermentation and once the wine fermenting is done. As I take readings I am a little confused about when to move wine to secondary fermenter. How long? Is it a certain number of days or are we measuring for a specific reading on the wine hydrometer? On the secondary fermentation, I know you are looking for a reading a specific of 0.995. Is that true?

Terry
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Hello Terry,

These are great questions. I’m glad you brought this issue up. It seems like the more you read about when to move wine to a secondary fermenter, the more answers you will find. Everyone seems to have an opinion on how long the fermentation time should be in the primary fermenter and the secondary fermenter, so let’s see if I can solidify an answer to your question. What you are essentially asking is:

How do I know when it’s time to move my fermentation into a secondary fermenter, and how do I know when the wine’s done fermenting?

A short answer to your question is: you should be following the number of days that are called for in any wine making instructions that you have. Simple as that! If your wine making instructions say to move the fermentation into a secondary fermenter like a wine carboy, etc., then do that. This is your best course of action.

But what if I don’t have instructions to tell me when to move wine to secondary?

Typically, the fermentation will need to be transferred into the secondary fermenter around the 5th day of fermentation. But, not all fermentations are the same. Some ferment so hard and fast, that by the fifth day, the fermentation is completely done. On occasion, others will take much, much longer.

What you are basically doing is transferring the fermentation into secondary when it has slowed down enough so that it won’t foam up and out of the secondary fermenter. This is usually around day 5, or when the wine hydrometer reads 1.030 to 1.020 on the specific gravity scale. This is when to move wine to a secondary fermenter when everything runs normal.

However, there are times when the fermentation is still foaming too much to go into a secondary fermenter, such as a carboy. In these instances you should wait until the foaming lowers enough that it can safely go into the carboy without making a big foamy mess through the air-lock.

Conversely, there are also times when the fermentation is going so slow that it might be 2 or more weeks before the fermentation will reach 1.030 on the hydrometer. In these instances, you must figure out why the fermentation is going so slow. The article, Top 10 Reasons For Fermentation Failure, that is listed on our website should give you some insight into this.

If after a couple of days you’re attempts to re-invigorating the fermentation are unsuccessful, go ahead and put the fermentation in the secondary fermenter anyway, and let it finish out it’s long, slow journey to becoming wine.

To answer the second half of your question…

The only real way to know if a fermentation is complete is to take a reading with wine hydrometer. You are looking for a reading of .998 or less on the specific gravity scale. I’ve seen fermentations end as low as .988, but this is rare.

Most importantly remember, just because the fermentation has stopped bubbling does not necessarily mean the fermentation has completed. All you know for sure is it has stopped, so be sure to have a hydrometer reading to depend on for verification of a complete fermentation.

With all this said, knowing when to move wine into a secondary fermenter is not super-critical to the process. Wine will be made, regardless. The only thing you don’t want to do is to completely forget to move the wine into a secondary at all. You want to keep the wine off of excessive amounts of sediment for extended periods of time. That is the most important aspect of when to move wine to secondary fermentation.

Happy Wine Making,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Starting And Final Specific Gravity Readings For Wine

Posted on August 30, 2020 by AIH

I am in the process of making my first batch of Scuppernong Wine. The SG [specific gravity] at the beginning was 1.116… The process has been going on for about 8 weeks now. The SG now is 1.030… I still see activity. What should the final specific gravity reading be when the wine is complete?

Name: Charles P.
State: South Carolina
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Hello Charles,

To answer your question, you should expect a final specific gravity for wine somewhere between .992 and .996 on your hydrometer.

Your starting specific gravity reading was a little high, so your wine yeast has a lot of work to do. Normally you would want a starting specific gravity between 1.070 and 1.100 for wine. Yours was 1.116. This may be more than the wine yeast can handle.

There are two reasons for this:

Sugar acts as a preservative. If the concentrate of sugar becomes too high, it can actually interfere with the wine yeast from even starting. Your fermentation started, so obviously this is not an issue for this fermentation.

Wine yeast has a limited tolerance to alcohol. As the alcohol level rises in the wine must, the wine yeast finds it harder and harder to ferment, sometimes to the point of not being able to ferment at all. This would be known as a stuck fermentation.

Your starting potential alcohol level was between 15% and 16%. A majority of wine yeast will have a hard time fermenting to this level of alcohol.

My guess is that your fermentation will become very slow as it ferments the last few percentage points of sugar. If this is the case, just be patient and give it plenty of time to do its thing. As long as you can see some slight progress, you are okay.

However, depending on the wine yeast you used, the fermentation may not be able to finish at all – a stuck fermentation. If this is the case, you may be forced into a situation to where you need to dilute the wine must with water to cut its alcohol level. This will help the yeast to start up again and finish the fermentation.

Since the starting specific gravity for your wine was so high, I would recommend that you also take a look at the Top 10 Reasons For Fermentation Failure. By doing this you may discover other things that can be done to help the fermentation along and get the final specific gravity for your wine where it needs to be.

Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus

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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Is Older Wine Better?… Not Necessarily!

Posted on August 27, 2020 by AIH

From the incredible prices being cried out at a Sotherby’s wine auction, to the fluffy articles that float around in today’s life-styles magazines, people are continuously being fed the notion that the older the wine is, the better it will be.

But is older wine better? Unfortunately, the answer is maybe – maybe not! The ol’ mantra: “the older the wine the better”, is just that – a mantra. It’s a generalization that is just as likely to be false as it is true. The reality with any wine is that there will always come a time when it would be best to drink up!

Wines don’t endlessly increase in quality like an investment fund or like a home increases in value. They have a life cycle, a beginning and an end, much like any living thing. At first, there is a steady rise in quality; then a flattening out, or plateauing; and eventually a long, slow decline.

The aging cycle of a today’s commercial wines are fairly well mapped and predictable. Some wines have very long life-cycles, involving many years, even decades. Then there’s other wines who’s aging potential is not so long. Based on the type of wine, how it was made, combined with an observation of its character at bottling, a timeline can be laid out by the winery that shows the optimum time to drink that particular wine. Once this theoretical point is reached, any additional aging is futile. In fact, too much aging beyond that point will result in a very slow decrease of the wine’s quality.

The very same holds true for homemade wines. There will come a point in each wine’s life when more aging will not be a good thing. Holding on to it will only provide you with less and less quality as time goes on – a direct mocking of the phrase, “the older the wine the better”.

The whole point of bringing this to light is that some home winemakers get into the game of saving their wines instead of drinking them, putting bottles away like heirlooms, thinking they’re going to become more exceptional as time goes by, saving them for their granddaughter’s wedding and all, but in reality this is little more than a waste of good wine.

By all means let the wine age. It my take 3 months. It might take 3 years. Every so often pull a bottle out and see how it is doing. Is it becoming more mellow? Is it developing any complexities or layers of flavors? If yes, then great, let the wine age a little longer. But when no improvement can be detected between samplings, then simply put, it’s time to start drinking.
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Is Wine Yeast And Baking Yeast The Same?

Posted on August 25, 2020 by AIH

I need you to help me settle a bet with a friend who also makes wine. He says that wine yeast is no different than what you can get in the store to make bread with. His quote “yeast is yeast”. I say that it is different, although I can’t explain how. Please help settle this and let us know who has to pay up, plus if there is a difference between wine yeast and baking yeast can you explain it to me.

Thanks,
Jamie
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Hello Jamie,

I’m going to be brutally honest, here. I hope this doesn’t break-up a good friendship.

To say that yeast is yeast is like saying a dog is a dog. Over the centuries dogs have been bred for various, specific tasks: hunting, herding, personal protection, attacking, protecting herds, companionship, etc. The same can be said for yeast. They have been bred over the decades to perform specific tasks: rising bread, making alcohol, bio-degrading oils, pharmaceutical production, etc.

So to bring this analogy full circle, when you’re making wine with a baking yeast, you’re hunting grizzlies with a chihuahua. Sorry friend, but wine yeast and baking yeast are not the same. In fact, they are very different. I would never recommend making wine with bread or baking yeast.

Wine yeast in particular is bred to obtain higher alcohol levels than baking yeast. On average, bread yeast will get you 9 or 10%. Anything higher than that is possible, but the baking yeast will have to struggle considerably.

Wine yeast are bred to thrive very well with the set of nutrients fruits naturally provide. Baking yeast, on the other hand, prefers the balance of nutrients found in grains or bread doughs.

Wine yeast clears more quickly from the wine than baking yeast. Wine yeast is bred to clump together as the fermentation activity slows – a process known as flocculation. The clumping allows the wine yeast to drop out and settle to the bottom more quickly. Baking yeast does not clump or flocculate. Instead, it slowly settles to the bottle as a fine haze. This process can take weeks instead of days.

Wine yeast foams less than baking yeast. This is because wine yeast are bred to produce less surface tension in the liquid than baking yeast.

Wine yeast is also more tolerant to sulfites than baking yeast. The wine yeast has actually been acclimated to coexist with some residual sulfites such as Campden tablets in the wine. This means that wine yeast can ferment just fine with some sulfites in the wine must. Baking yeast is not as fortunate. Even small amounts of sulfites can stop a wine fermentation dead in its tracks.

Another issue is that bread yeast is only packaged under food-grade conditions. This is certainly suitable for baking. The yeast is only being utilized for a few hours, not days, so the perpetuation of any contaminating organisms do not have enough time to do any damage.

On the other hand, with wine yeast we are talking days if not weeks that the yeast is in play. This is plenty of time for stray organisms riding on the yeast to potentially breed into a full-fledged infestation spoiling the wine. For this reason, wine yeast is package under sterile conditions. This is far more stringent than food-grade packaging.

To sum all this up, you can certainly make wine with a baking yeast, but you will be sacrificing flavor and potentially alcohol. You are also increasing the likelihood of having a stuck fermentation. This is because of issues with nutrients and the use of sodium metabisulfite.

So, as I think you can see, wine yeast and baking yeast are not the same. In fact, there are many differences between the two. That combined with the fact that wine yeast is not all that expensive to buy, why wouldn’t you use it in your winemaking?

Happy Wine Making
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

The Relationship Between Oxygen And Wine Aging

Posted on August 23, 2020 by AIH

You can’t read very long on the subject of wine making without running across the warnings of excessive air exposure and how oxygen can turn a great wine into a brown, caramelized mess through a process of oxidation. Books, websites and even this blog have expressed these cautions.

The reality is without some oxygen being available, the progression of a wine’s aging process can be brought to a near standstill. Wine needs oxygen to age. Without it a wine will not fully reach its aging potential. There is a solid relationship between oxygen and wine aging, it’s just a matter of finely controlling how much dissolved oxygen is in the wine.

Once the wine is bottled, it begins a series of changes. Tannins become less harsh, aromas tend to develop a richness, etc., but all of this can not take place without a slow – very slow – infusion of oxygen. Oxygen is the catalyst for all these changes during the wine’s maturation process.

But this oxygen needs to be given slowly. If too much oxygen is made available to the wine too quickly, it will develop symptoms of bottle shock. This basically means the aging process is out of balance. More oxygen is being dissolved into the wine than it can process for aging. The wine will taste flabby and lifeless with little bouquet, and worse yet, it could start to show signs of oxidation such a browning. So, while the wine need oxygen to age, it needs it in very small doses of long periods of time. This is the most important thing to understand about oxygen and wine aging.

A wine bottle and its cork can be considered a wine preservation system. It’s job is to preserve the wine and allow it to develop steadily and evenly as time passes. How well the cork seals or how well it allows air to permeate, controls the rate of aging.

While it may be your instinct to try to age the wine as quickly as the wine will bare, you don’t want the wine to age-out too fast. This is because the wine will begin to slowly start to degrade after doing so. A bottle of wine has a beginning and an end – an aging life-cycle. There is a peak in flavor along this life-cycle. You don’t want the wine to take too long because you’ll end up drinking your wine when it has not yet reached its best.

For example, our Superior Grade Straight Corks work well for wines that you intend to consume in about 3 years time. Our Extra-First Grade Straight Corks are for wines you intend to consume over a 4 or 6 year period. Extra-First Grade is denser than the Superior Grade so less air gets through, slowing the aging process.

Then there’s Synthetic Corks. These corks are designed to allow the optimal amount of air to pass over time. They are ideal for wines that you intend to age for for than 18 month. They also work well for early aging wines such as Zinfandel where little oxygen is needed for the wine to come into fruition.

For these reasons, when you buy corks their density should be taken into consideration. By selecting the right grade of cork you can control the wine’s rate of aging to one that is appropriate for the needs of that particular style and to the needs of your consumption.

Wine needs oxygen to age. Oxygen and wine aging go hand-in-hand, but it’s all about controlling how much. The key is to not let the wine get too much too fast. Keep it slow any steady.
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

My Malolactic Fermentation Won’t Start

Posted on August 20, 2020 by AIH

I added malolactic culture to two carboys of wine approximately 30 days ago. One of them showed sign of good fermentation, but in the second one the malolactic fermentation won’t start. What can I do with the carboy that is not fermenting?

Thank James
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Hello James,

There are a few reasons why a malolactic fermentation won’t start or complete in a wine. Before adding the malolactic culture to the wine it is best to make sure that you have some things in order. The environment that the wine is providing for the culture needs to one that promotes a malolactic fermentation. Here or some thing to consider:

Temperature: Make sure the malolactic fermentation temperature is between 70°F. – 75°F. If the temperature is too cool the malolactic culture will not ferment as hardily as it should, if at all. Also, beware of malolactic fermentation temperatures above this range. These temperatures could promote the growth of unwanted organisms that may produce off-flavors in the wine. If you are currently experiencing MLF temperatures that are cooler than this, we have a heating belt that is designed specifically for such a situation. I doubt that this is the reason why your malolactic fermentation won’t start since both carboys are side-by-side, but I’ve included here for completeness, just the same.

Acidity: Just like temperature, the wine’s acidity level needs to be tested to make sure it is in a decent range. If the acidity is too high, it will inhibit the malolactic culture’s activity. You also need to be concerned about having too low of an acid level. This will promote the growth of unwanted bacteria. A simple pH reading will do. You can use pH Strips (litmus papers) or a digital pH meter. You would like to have the pH be between 3.2 and 3.6. Remember, the scale works backwards. The lower the number the higher the acid. If your acidity is too high, then treat the wine with acid reducing crystals. This will drop out some if the acid as crystals. If the acidity is too low then add some acid blend.

Alcohol: If the wine’s alcohol level is too high this can by why your malolactic fermentation won’t start. This type of problem can be experienced with wines that are 13% or higher. It may be necessary to dilute the wine with water to bring the alcohol concentration down. Always use distilled water for this purpose.

Sulfite (SO2): A malolactic fermentation is very sensitive to sulfite. It is much more sensitive than a yeast fermentation. Sulfite is the main ingredient you are adding when you use Campden tablets, potassium metabisulfite or sodium metabisulfite. It is also produced naturally by the yeast during a fermentation. You would like the amount of free SO2 in the wine to be no higher than 10 ppm. You can get away with 15 ppm, but it is not preferable. You can use a Titret test kit to determine how much sulfite is in your wine. If there is too much, you can lower it by racking the wine into another vessel. Do so in a splashing manner. This activity will cause some of the SO2 to dissipate as a gas.

Ironically, if you cannot get the malolactic fermentation to start in your wine after making these adjustments, it is in the wine’s best interest to pull-the-plug on the project and bring the sulfite level up to a normal level – somewhere around 35 ppm to 55 ppm – and bottle the wine. This reason for this is that if the SO2 level is low in preparation for a malolactic fermentation, you don’t want the wine to stay still too long in this situation. You want to either bring the SO2 level up to a protective level, or have an active MLF. Having neither for a stretch of time is jeopardizing the wine.

That’s how to get a malolactic fermentation going in your wine. Get the temperature and these other things set and your MLF starter should take off just fine. There may be other reasons why a malolactic fermentation won’t start, but I’m confident that the above covers 99% of the issues.

If you’d like to read more about this we have another blog post about the reasons for doing a malolactic fermentation.

Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus

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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

There’s A Sulfur Smell In My Wine!

Posted on August 18, 2020 by AIH

I’m making a Sauvignon Blanc from a 6 gallon bucket of refrigerated fresh juice that was inoculated with a wine yeast by the producer. Instructions on bucket: bring must to 76 degrees stir 2x daily, recover with bucket lid and rack to secondary fermenter at 1.020. My starting SG 1.090 and I racked last night after two weeks to secondary at 1.020 and noticed the must smells like a hard boiled egg. Any suggestions, or will this smell work its way out during future rackings?

Name: Michael N.
State: Pennsylvania
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Hello Michael,

So sorry you are having such an issue with this batch.

The hard-boiled egg smell you are referring to is obviously a sulfur odor. This sulfur smell in your homemade wine comes from hydrogen sulfide.

Hydrogen sulfide is a compound that is naturally produced during a wine fermentation. All wine fermentations will produce some hydrogen sulfide, however there are some scenarios that can cause more of it to be produced than others. Apparently, your wine falls into one or more of these situations:

It could be that your wine is fermenting with a wild yeast strain. Some wild yeast are not that good at fermenting a wine must. They have to work harder causing an over-production of hydrogen sulfide. However, if the wine must was sulfited before your received it, this situation is not very likely. Wild yeast are very sensitive to sulfites. They would have easily been destroyed by it.

A nutrient deficient wine must can cause a sulfur smell in a fermenting wine. Whether the yeast is wild or domesticated, it will have to work harder to get the job done when they are malnourished, again, causing excessive hydrogen sulfide production. Your wine must does not fit this scenario very well. If you are using 100% grape juice, there is a significant amount of nutrients available. Only on a rare occasion will a grape juice fermentation produce an abundance of sulfur odor because of a lack of nutrients.

Having a fermentation that is too warm can cause a sulfur smell in fermenting wine. If the fermentation was over 80°F., this can put the wine yeast under additional strain and increase the likelihood of too much hydrogen sulfide being produced.

Having too little yeast trying to do too much work can cause a sulfur smell in a fermenting wine. If for some reason the wine yeast added did not have enough viable cells (old yeast), or if some of the wine yeast was destroyed during storage or shipping of the wine must, this can cause an over-production of hydrogen sulfide.

Using a domesticated wine yeast that naturally has a higher likelihood of producing hydrogen sulfide could be why you have a sulfur smell in your fermenting wine. Not all wine yeast are the same. Each one has it’s own unique set of qualities. Some wine yeast have a higher propensity towards producing higher levels of hydrogen sulfide. These wine yeast are more sensitive to the above situations.

Finally, it could be any combination of the above. Quite often things are not so cut-and-dry in wine making. It could be an orchestration of two or three of the above situations coming together to put your wine in the mess it is currently in.

The good news is that almost all of the time this particular fault in a wine is correctable. Quite often, time is all that is needed. Doing a racking after the fermentation can significantly help to release the sulfur odor. So does adding sulfites such as: Campden tablets, potassium metabisulfite and sodium metabisulfite. Any of these will help to drive the hydrogen sulfide out of the wine.

Michael, my suggestion to you is to do nothing right now. In fact there is nothing that you can do at this stage that would help the situation. Continue on as you normally would with any wine. When you get the wine to a point that it is ready to bottle, that is when an evaluation needs to be done. Simply smell and make a determination: is there still a sulfur smell in the wine? If so, there are additional steps that can be taken.

Removing Sulfur Smell In Wine

Most of the time the sulfur smell of hydrogen sulfide will go away with normal rackings of the wine. The addition of Campden tablets or potassium metabisulfite as normally prescribed in a wine recipe will help to drive out the sulfur smell, as well. So, it is very likely that the sulfur-y smell will go away in due time.

But, there are times when racking the wine is not enough. In these situations, removing the sulfur smell from the wine may require you to treat the wine in a splashing manner. Let the wine run down the side-wall of the fermenter as it comes out of the siphon hose when racking. Or, you can try pouring the wine from one open fermenter to the next. In many instances I’ve seen this work successfully.

Be sure to treat the wine with potassium metabisulfite after doing this to drive the oxygen out of the wine, reducing the risk of oxidation, in your wine and, as mentioned before, it will help to drive out some of the hydrogen sulfide.

In almost all cases, removing the sulfur smell from the wine will be accomplished with the above treatments, but there are some rare instances when the above treatments just are not enough. In these more drastic situations you will want to treat the wine with copper. Yes, I said copper! When the wine comes into contact with copper, a reaction will occur that causes the hydrogen sulfide to release more freely, removing the sulfur smell from the wine.

The easiest way I have found to do this is to purchase copper brillo pads. Place a brillo pad in a funnel and pour the wine through it. You will notice that the brillo pad will start to corrode very quickly. This is from the reaction we are seeking. If the brillo pad starts to look spent, then feel free to put another one in its place. Again, you will want to treat the wine with potassium metabisulfite after performing the treatment to drive out oxygen that was introduced into the wine.

Michael, I am confident that removing the sulfur smell from your wine will be no problem at all for you. Be patient. Do your rackings and potassium metabisulfite additions as you normally would. When it comes time to bottle the wine, if still have a sulfur smell in the wine, then you can consider treating the wine with splashing, and so forth, but I would not do anything before then.