Silly mistake, can it be saved?

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HappyWino

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In short, I got my wires crossed and mixed up my Pot. Meta. with my Pot. Sorb. and ended up adding 2 1/2 tsp of Pot. Meta. into 5g of Skeeter Pee...by my rough calcs I probably have 750ppm sulfites at this point :(

Feeling pretty dumb about it...is this batch salvageable without turning it into a toxic swamp or should I just pour it and be grateful that it is Skeeter Pee and not $300 of grapes? :confused:

Cheers

HW
 
If you can get your hands on a tank of nitrogen, argon, or even co2 and find a way to attach a fish tank bubbler stone to it, you can try running gas through it for a while (a half hour or more). That will remove a lot of it. Otherwise, See how it ages in bulk. With the acidic nature of this stuff, the so2 might break free.
 
You can use hydrogen peroxide to bind the sulphite, there is a formula to show how much h2o2 is needed, somewhere on this forum.
 
I did some research on using H2O2 to clean this mess up and found the following;

Removing Excess SO2

If you ever need to lower your SO2 due to a mistake in calculation
try splash racking or stirring vigorously to aerate. If the FREE SO2
is still too high do the following: for every 10 ppm free SO2 you
want to remove, add 1 ml. of 3% hydrogen peroxide per gallon of
wine. An oxidative reaction occurs immediately. Use only fresh 3%
Hydrogen Peroxide, available at the drugstore.Use this method to
remove up to 100 ppm, more than this and the wine will oxidize and
lose its flavor
.​

Given that I need to remove something in the order of 700ppm, I don't think this is going to be viable, I guess I could try it and see how it tastes but even if it tastes fine, what is the impact of having 1 1/2 cups of H2O2 added to the wine? :confused:

I have a CO2 tank so I could try bubbling but then I'll need a couple of sulfite tests to determine if it really had any effect.

I am leaning towards just putting this one down to experience and starting over, I am only out of pocket $10-15 after all so my pride was injured way more than my pocket when all is said and done :(

Cheers

HW
 
Would degassing drive off SO2? I vote to bulk age for 6 months maybe hitting it with co2 every month or so. If you are into wine making this might be a good time to get a SO2 test kit. Then again who wants to tie up a carboy for bulk aging skeeter pee.
 
If your trying to oxidize it out CO2 will not help. Maybe a aquarium air pump with an air stone. If you have the space you could try the large amount of H2O2, and make flavorless wine.
I would also suggest you try to find some "food grade" 35%H2O2, just so you don't have to add the extra water (and what ever else in that stuff).

I'm not sure about the chem for the H2O2 trick is going for. It would make ether SO3 + H2O or H2SO4 (sulfuric acid), likely both...
 
If your trying to oxidize it out CO2 will not help. Maybe a aquarium air pump with an air stone.
Any gas running through it will remove some of the so2. air or oxygen will only oxidize it.
If you have the space you could try the large amount of H2O2, and make flavorless wine.
I would also suggest you try to find some "food grade" 35%H2O2, just so you don't have to add the extra water (and what ever else in that stuff).

I'm not sure about the chem for the H2O2 trick is going for. It would make ether SO3 + H2O or H2SO4 (sulfuric acid), likely both...
I wouldn't try too much h2o2. Sounds nasty to me.

You could try exposing it to copper, but this won't remove too much either.

For this much, it will be a lot of work, I would toss it and make a new batch, but that is because it will take a ton of time.

If you really want to try and save it, try this.

1-Expose it to a small piece of copper pipe (clean the pipe first). You will want to stir the mix with it for about 3-5 seconds. This will remove 10-30 parts so2 in my experience.

2-Gas it with co2 (what you have available) for about a half hour.

3-Store it in bulk for a month.

4-Repeat steps 2 and 3 until it tastes right.

Remember, so2 is harmful in large quantities, so be careful only to take small sips while tasting. Copper is also harmful in quantities, so only do this once. At the winery, we do free so2 tests in order to get our wine within standards, but before we bottle we do a sensory evaluation to make sure the levels aren't too high, but high enough to keep the wine stable. If you smell the stuff and the corners of your sinuses burn a little, the level is too high, let it go another round.
 
IMHO, don't toss it, whatever you do. Try something, if it doesn't work then you and everyone here will know better next time. I'm new to wine and mead making and I have hundreds of mistakes ahead of me. I humbly request that you try something, anything, to save it so the rest of us might learn.
 
I would usually agree, but he has 15x the level of so2 than he should. so2 is poison. At $10-15 for the batch, it would be easier to restart (the whole batch takes weeks not years). Dump it in a part of your yard that you want dead.
 
You could try exposing it to copper, but this won't remove too much either.

Would this be to make copper sulfate (CuSO4)? Though this is toxic, I think it may be similarly toxic to the SO2. Also; most copper sulfate could be removed with racking, as it is rather dense... just don't drink it if it's bright blue (a good rule in general)

On further investigation I've come to the fact that SO2 boils at -10C (14F). This means that you could likely remove it with any gas bubbled through it. If you do this you would want to go with something that would not effect the rest of the wine, and CO2 would be a very good choice.
WIP's advice sounds good to me, though for your situation I think a more aggressive approach would be more effective (more gassing, more copper exposure, and more racking because of the copper)
 
Copper binds to so2 and evaporates it from what I understand. Either way, it removes some. With a liquid as acidic as this, you do not want to expose it to copper for too long. I can not express enough, copper is a poison.
 
Copper binds to so2 and evaporates it from what I understand. Either way, it removes some. With a liquid as acidic as this, you do not want to expose it to copper for too long. I can not express enough, copper is a poison.

I think that the way it would bind is to make copper sulfate (Cu+2 SO2 => CuSO4). Copper sulfate does not evaporate, and is also poison in quantity.

So pick your poison (no really):
SO2, or copper sulfate CuSO4, or sulfuric acid H2SO4

It may be best to leave it as SO2 as that is the only one that will evaporate.

But really, you should just dump this one. It has a lot of poison in it, and all the trick to get it out are really tricks to make it into poisons with less of a taste.

But if you didn't mind slowly pumping $50 worth of CO2 through it, it would be and interesting experiment.
 
But if you didn't mind slowly pumping $50 worth of CO2 through it, it would be and interesting experiment.

That's really the rub isn't it, I am all for experimenting in the name of the greater good, but not of it is going to cost me more than the batch cost in the first place :)

Anybody have any thoughts what would happen if I force carbed it and then degassed it? For some reason it seems to me that might be more effective than just bubbling through it but I really have no clue here...and I haven't seen anything like it mentioned anywhere on the web I could find.

Cheers

HW
 
I think bubbling would release more, because the gases are drawing it out as it goes.

One other thing, try warming the batch up, maybe in your bathtub full of hot water or something. so2 doesn't like to be warm.
 
oh yeah; heat. We didn't talk about that yet. That would be a really good way.
solubility-so2-water.png

The warmer it gets the less the SO2 wants to be in there. If you heated it and bubbled it with CO2 you'd get more out for the same amount of CO2.

I like your carbonation idea, though it sounds like a lot of work. If you were to carbonate, open, heat, cool then repeat you could get most of it out in just a few months ;). It's worth trying once or twice to see if it makes a notable difference, plus it wouldn't be that expensive.
A good air stone and a CO2 tank would likely work faster, as you could bring it up to temp, just hold it there and bubble as long as you wanted.
 
Be careful.

Make sure you have a window open. I have almost been knocked out from excessive amounts of so2. (I sniffed a barrel to see if it was cleaned and got a nose full of so2/tartaric/h2o mixture)

That stays with you for a while.
 
The winemaker where I work accidentally added 10x the correct dose of SO2 due to a calculation error. He told me he was going to use the h202 trick but I never heard the result. He was planning to stir it in very slowly to avoid oxidising the wine. Otherwise you should throw out the wine, there's no other practical way to treat it.

There has been a thread about this before.

Greg
 
The winemaker where I work accidentally added 10x the correct dose of SO2 due to a calculation error. He told me he was going to use the h202 trick but I never heard the result. He was planning to stir it in very slowly to avoid oxidising the wine. Otherwise you should throw out the wine, there's no other practical way to treat it.

There has been a thread about this before.

Greg

Well I couldn't find that thread, but I'm sure there have been at least a few.

We have been discussing the H2O2 "trick" in detail and I'm rather concerned with the potential chemical outcomes, oxidizing the wine would be the least of my concerns.
 
I would think heat and co2 would be the best option. I know heat is really good at releasing the stuff and this stuff doesn't seem to mind heat.
 

Thanks for the links.

It seems to me it would be better to leave it as SO2 than to convert it to H2SO4 (sulfuric acid) and maybe some SO3. These are both far more stable in water that the SO2.

Okay, I dug up some info. The FDA allows for up to 0.014% sulfuric acid (if that's by volume 140ppm) content in alcoholic beverages.
If that's by weight, it's even less because it has a higher density than the rest of your solution.

I don't have a lot of faith in the FDA's guidelines, but it does tell us a very little bit will not kill a person (at least not fast). I can't seem to fined any toxicology reports on ingestion of sulfuric acid solution, but it seems better than SO2 or CuSOd4.

But the H2O2 should be the last step, after trying to remove it in none chemical ways.
 
I can get the federal limit when I am at work today. I know it is lower than 140 ppm. I thought it was around 80ppm.
 
I can get the federal limit when I am at work today. I know it is lower than 140 ppm. I thought it was around 80ppm.

Okay, so I guess that % is by weight as that would work out to be near 80ppm. Sulfuric acid has a density of about 1.8g per cubic cm if I recall correctly.
 
After talking to the owner (been in wine for almost 50 years) he said that the maximum so2 over time is 200ppm, but not all of that is free in the wine. A lot of that falls out or evaporates off. Our typical wine only has 115-120 ppm over time and only 35-50 ppm free when it is bottled.

There is a formula, but he doesn't have it. We go with a sensory evaluation. We try to put the maximum in without being able to sense it (advanced noses). When we can barely sense it, the general public can't and we end up right around the numbers posted above.
 
There is a good document here on removal of so2. The product isn't sulfuric acid but sulphates.

http://www.awri.com.au/industry_support/winemaking_resources/frequently_asked_questions/notes/TN06.pdf

"In inorganic chemistry, a sulfate is a salt of sulfuric acid."-Wikipedia
So thinking about this more even if the reaction would make sulfuric acid, that wouldn't stay around for long, as it's highly reactive with just about everything.
But the problem I see still stands, you are converting SO2 to other toxic chemicals that are less noticeable.
The only 100% safe way it to evaporate it (just don't get poisoned by the fumes).
 
"In inorganic chemistry, a sulfate is a salt of sulfuric acid."-Wikipedia
So thinking about this more even if the reaction would make sulfuric acid, that wouldn't stay around for long, as it's highly reactive with just about everything.
But the problem I see still stands, you are converting SO2 to other toxic chemicals that are less noticeable.
The only 100% safe way it to evaporate it (just don't get poisoned by the fumes).

"a maximum concentration of soluble sulfates,
(expressed as potassium sulphate) at 20ºC of 2 g/L"

This is the Australian standard but will give you an idea of the low toxicity of sulfates, 2g/L is a fair bit, 2000ppm. Evaporating the SO2 would take ages, probably days of bubbling with CO2, I don't see how that could be practical, you would also remove the aromatic flavour compounds from the wine. The link I posted is the Australian wine research institute, a very well respected authority on wine. If they say this is the way to get rid of SO2 then I believe them.
 
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