dark purple foam layer

Hi all, second wine kit here so still not sure what is normal and what is weird. We are at the stage where we have added clarifiers and waited 10 days and are about to rack to the final carboy/bright tank.

There is a very viscous dark purple foam layer at the neck of the carboy, floating with the wine. It is a red wine, so the purple part makes sense, but what is this stuff? It looks like gellified foam from when we whipped the wine after adding chitosan. Is this normal? I will post photos later. We plan on going ahead and racking and hopefully leaving this jelly layer behind.

Picobrew said:

Hi all, second wine kit here so still not sure what is normal and what is weird. We are at the stage where we have added clarifiers and waited 10 days and are about to rack to the final carboy/bright tank.

There is a very viscous dark purple foam layer at the neck of the carboy, floating with the wine. It is a red wine, so the purple part makes sense, but what is this stuff? It looks like gellified foam from when we whipped the wine after adding chitosan. Is this normal? I will post photos later. We plan on going ahead and racking and hopefully leaving this jelly layer behind.

Click to expand...

I've never seen anything like that, after adding finings. I'm wondering what you mean by whip it after you added the chitosan. In every kit I've ever done, you degas first, then add the finings. I wonder if something caused the finings to "gell up". Did you add anything else?

It probably doesn't matter at all, it just seems kind of odd. I'd rack from under it and not worry about it.

Thanks Yooper. The kit (wineexpert) said to stir vigourously after each addition, so we just used the wine whipped and let it fly. After racking, this foam stuff looked a lot like the sediment at the bottom, just floatiing as islands on top of the wine. We were able to leave it behind but had to leave like 1500ml of wine behind with all the sediment. This meant we had to top up with 1500ml in the bright tank. We used 750ml of last wine batch and 750ml of water. Is it normal to leave that much behind and subsequently top up? It is similar to how much I leave with beer but with beer I don't have to top up to compensate.

Sounds an awful lot like a vinegar mother to me.

Ok Don't do scaring me with vinegar! This wine isn't that old ( a few weeks), is that possible?? Anyways, here are pics. I am hopeful that everything is just fine.

YES! That is great! Proteins and whatnot... you want this. I just started getting this when using a wine wand...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/winexpert-wine-wand-135298/

I think you've foamed up some finings along with the material it should be clearing and instead of dropping to the bottom, because you've aerated it and it's solidified, it's stayed floating.

My Pinot Noir kit looked just like that after I whipped it. I mean exactly like that. Those could easily have been my pictures posted. It stayed that way for a week or two. I just looked at it after it for the first time in 6 - 8 weeks and the floaties are gone.

I think EoinMag nailed it. Many years ago I used to work in industrial water treatment and we used flocculants which were very similar to the finings used in winemaking. One of the processes we used was to aerate the water so that instead of settling to the bottom, the floc rose to the top so we could skim it off. Either way it's removing the suspended solids from your wine, so it should clear and you should be fine.

Defiantly not a vinegar mother. btw homemade vinegar is not necessarily a bad thing, 5 gallons of it might be tho lol.