> > "Charlie" > wrot
> > Long time lurker here, first question.
> >
> > We have discovered that the bottles have the dreaded rotten egg gas in
> > them...
> >


Lum Wrote:
> Charlie, about the only thing you can do at this point is to de-bottle the
> wine. Get it back into a bulk container and then treat the lot with a 1%
> copper sulfate solution. More info near the bottom of the page here
> http://home.att.net/~lumeisenman/chapt12.html
> Good luck,
> lum


Lum ( and others that offered suggestions ) - thanks

I'm thinking the next problem will be size of the container to use. I
have about 70 botles of the pongy wine, ie about 55l. If I use the 200l
container I will have too much head room and oxygen, so I was thinking
of doing the fix in 2 batches using a 25l container I have - it's a beer
brewing kit with an airlock.

This of course means that I will be adding miniscule amounts of copper
sulphate with the resultant risks of getting too much copper in the
final blend, but I read this from your book:

"Home winemakers remove hydrogen sulfide from wine when fermentation is
complete by adding about 50 milligrams per liter of sulfur dioxide. The
wine is then racked with a great deal of splashing and bubbling"

In you opinion ( or anybody elses) would this be a method work - I would
add 2500 mg of SO2 to a cup of water and then pour (and splash it about
a bi) 35 bottles into the container. Let it settle for a few days,
then re-bottle after it has settled.

Or should I just get a really small dose of Copper sulphate??

And a really stupid question - the only way I will know if the H2S is
gone is by sniffing and slurping - right? there's no fancy tests
available????

Once again, any help would be appreciated.

Charlie


PS Getting everybody together again to re-do the process will be tricky,
so I can't use our 200l (or 500l) containers