Mixing Beer and Wine in Secondary

All - I am attempting to reproduce a home-made akin to Dogfish Head Red&White. I have the belgian ale portion in primary right now. I intend to add 10% volume of Pinot Noir in secondary, then bottle. The wine would be off the shelf - fermented and bottled.

My question is this : should I be thinking about adding yeast into this solution before bottling - will the sulfites in the wine kill my ale yeasts? Maybe the alcohol in the wine AND the sulfites combined would??

Opinions and experience welcomed

My opinion is you shouldn't taint beer with the presence of wine!

And the real answer I think is that the sulfites will be fine. Isn't a campden tablet just sulfite? After a short time it becomes inactive for reasons I don't understand.

But yeah, don't wine the beer, dude!

Actually it all depends on how much that wine has been sulfited before being bottled. Too much sulfite will kill yeast. Not sure if it will be enough to actually kill the beer yeast. They make sulfite tests to check to see how much sulfite is actually in the wine.

Homercidal said:

My opinion is you shouldn't taint beer with the presence of wine!

Click to expand...

Or the other way around!

If you want to remove the sulfite. Expose the wine to copper for a short time. For a few gallons we stir a 2" by 2" piece of copper pipe for 10 seconds.

Copper attaches itself the sulfur and dissolves it. This will not remove all of the sulfites, but it will remove enough to maybe save your yeast.

WIP said:

If you want to remove the sulfite. Expose the wine to copper for a short time. For a few gallons we stir a 2" by 2" piece of copper pipe for 10 seconds.

Copper attaches itself the sulfur and dissolves it. This will not remove all of the sulfites, but it will remove enough to maybe save your yeast.

Click to expand...

You do know that copper can be a poison????

If over used. I am talking seconds. Not long enough. It is a delicate process. I should have put a warning on that post. I apologize.

In small amounts (if you want to play with this) do not expose wine to copper for more than a couple of seconds. It is a powerful and TOXIC metal.

Copper is used extensively in plumbing systems and brewing systems. I don't see that there is a thing to worry about. Now if you were dumping copper flakes in your wine........would be a different story.

My house has copper plumbing. Is anyone really suggesting stirring wine with a piece of copper is a health issue? Come on...

It could be. The way the chemicals in wine react with the copper make it toxic. BUT if you only use it for short stirs, you will be fine.

mattco said:

My house has copper plumbing. Is anyone really suggesting stirring wine with a piece of copper is a health issue? Come on...

Click to expand...

Your household copper pipes were meant to be used to transfer WATER, not acidic beer and wine with a generous amount of alcohol.

And copper is used in the brewing process PRE-fermentation. There is a very small amount of copper leached into the wort, which is consumed by the yeast during fermentation.

Fermented liquids can leach significant quantities of copper, which could cause serious health problems. It doesn't take much copper to hurt you.

Wow. Who knew - other than you'all obviously.

OK. So I figure then I am going to add a strong yeast JIC to the secondary then (along with the wine). I doubt I'd will need tons of yeast functioning in the bottles - these will likely need a few months to condition anyhow.

they use copper for stills. i wonder how this doesn't poison you?

I don't think the acidity of the alcohol vapours in a copper still is high enough to be a concern. Plus, my limited research into the various methods of dis stilling (for educational purposes only) makes me think that the contact between alcohol and copper is limited in time.

I think it takes more than a few seconds to leach enough to be a concern. People use copper tubing to serve beer from a jockey box, but others won't due to the concern of leaching too much copper. I wish it could be proven safe, because a copper coil is a Hella less expensive than Stainless!