Bad smell and taste in wine help!

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kevinstan

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I tried a batch of skeeter pee that just completely cleared over the past few days. This was the first thing I have brewed that had the "rhino farts" with the ever so nasty rotten egg smell while brewing. The smell went away after about a week and I was under the impression that it would not affect the taste of the wine at all so I had no worries. I just racked my skeeter pee and took a small taste and almost threw up. It tasted somewhat like the nasty egg smell I had weeks ago with it. The only other way to explain the taste and smell of it now is something like bitter seeds. Almost if you could imagine crunching lemon seeds or muscadine seeds. It's that type of smell and taste - really bitter and something not right with it. I have read about using copper pipe and all kinds of other fancy stuff but I don't have any of that. Please tell me how to rescue my skeeter pee! Is this from the H2S or is it oxidized ? Or something else ? Please help! Thank you everyone in advance!
 
Doubt it is oxidized, but if you have the rotten eggsmell you can splash rack it from carboy to bucket with just a bit of copper tubing attached to racking tubing, or splash rack it over a piece of copper flashing, or even one of those copper kitchen scrubbies if you can find them. Even old clean sanitized copper pennies, five or six work great, I think pre70 is okay, but you may want to confirm when copper pennies became primarily zinc. May take up to a series of three splash rackings for this to clear. But for taste, if you tasted this dry it will be NASTY...you need to draw off a sample, add some sugar syrup and chill it...then taste it.

If it were oxidized you could see it if you put a sample in a wine glass and placed a piece of solid white paper behind it, tilt the glass and look at the outermost edge of wine..you want to see from the outermost aspect a clear halo of liquid that bleeds into the color of the wine. If the halo is brown tinged then it is oxidized.
 
Thanks for the reply Sara. I may try to find a copper kitchen scrubber and see if a few times across that fixes it. Since this is just a one gallon test batch I'm not too concerned but I would like to fix it if possible with minimal work. Even knowing I can use pennies to fix it is a good thought to try. If all else fails I ill dump it down the drain and try something new.
 
I splash racked over copper two times back and forth into the carboys and still no change. Still taste and smells like burnt rubber. Any other suggestions or is it time to dump it ?
 
Even old clean sanitized copper pennies, five or six work great, I think pre70 is okay, but you may want to confirm when copper pennies became primarily zinc.

Pre-1982 and about half of 1983 pennies were all copper. That was the last year before zinc took over. I'm a nerd. I'm not afraid to admit it.
 
Just a note before using it as DrainO...

Be sure to COMPLETELY degass, and then degass some more. SP developes alot of suspended SO2. If not completely still, you may be getting much of the taste from the smell of expelled gasses. Splash racking will go a long way to help, but I'd give it another shot or two before tossing. (and yes, I'm the cheap guy that will set a bad wine aside for a L O N G time in hopes it'll improve before pitching :D)

Best of luck!!!
 
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