couple of noob questions..

I got about 25#'s of what appear to be concord grapes from a friend and thought I'd experiment with some wine.
As of now I have them all de-stemmed, sitting in a bucket. I have no local source for campden tabs tho. Is there some other form of this chemical I can buy at other-than brew stores? I did grab a pack of katadyn water purifier tabs and sports authority, but this stuff is sodium chlorite 6.4%, and sodium dichloroisocyanurate dihydrate 1.0%....

I think I'm gonna end up taking these back and waiting for some campden, but thought I'd ask about another option..

Some people skip the sulfites altogether & just pitch a big yeast starter. Probably better than giving the grapes back... Skip the katadyn chemicals - that's for making safe drinking water while backpacking. What about getting campden tablets mail order?

Concord is some of my favorite wine. Good luck with your batch!

The chemicals are potassium or sodium metabisulphite. I don't believe they are used for much outside the wine industry.

I have seen stump removers that use sodium metabisulphite, but A. probably not food-grade and B. about 100 times as much as you'll even use.

If you use a couple packet of dry wine yeast, you should be okay. K1V-1116 is a competitive factor yeast that will run rough-shod over wild yeasts.

Sodium bisulfite or metabisulfite is used to dechlorinate aquarium water, but just because it doesn't kill a goldfish I don't think I'd put the stuff from the pet store in my wine. Better just to make a good healthy starter like everybody else is recommending. I'm sure it'll be fine. Plenty of time to order some online before racking time.

Thanks for the replies.. I ended up ordering some campden online. Just stuck the grapes in my beer cooler. I did, however, forget to order wine yeast. I've got some ale yeast onhand, think that will work without ruining the batch?