Brettanomyces in my wine!!!

[Brewkowski]

Well, I've been waiting patiently while a few batches age in glass carboys, and I checked them today and found one to have a new layer of funk on top of it. I couldn't get a good picture of it, but it's a very slight scumy layer with some rod shaped dudes floating around on top of it, and I'm pretty sure that fits for Brett??

It's one of the first grape wines I have made and so far the other 3 from the same frozen must vendor seem not to be infected. So what is the normal process for dealing with this? I haven't tasted it yet, so I'm not sure how bad it is. Should I rack it into a super sanitized carboy with a heavy dosage of SO2? Blend it with a 2 gal batch I made, also adding SO2? IF I bottle it will it only get worse?

It's a Malbec with a pH around 3.4, so I'm not sure if that did it, or if I just didn't sanitize well enough or if there were issues because I had to wait to pitch yeast (problem with doing 4 batches at once).

Anyone have experience with this?

 

[Cyclman]

I wonder if you could blend a Brett wine with an ale?

I tasted many wonderful Brett beers at GABF, am highly intrigued by them. Also have had a handful of ales with wine must in them, also think they are wonderful.

Maybe this is a chocolate in my peanut butter moment.

 

[Brewkowski]

Ok, after further investigation it seems that I do not have Brett, it's merely a film yeast of some sort. I'm not sure if that changes much on what I need to do to the wine but I guess my best plan is to rack to a new carboy with plenty of SO2, and leave the top layer of wine behind as much as possible.

 

[pumpkinman2012]

You have mercaptans, this is caused by having too much head space and low SO2 levels.
If you cannot remove it, if it were very close to the top of the neck of the carboy, it would be easy to top off with distilled water until it either over flows out of the carboy or you can remove it.
If you have substantial head space, try to rack under it into a clean carboy only large enough for the amount of wine, no head space, treat the wine with meta, I would add double the amount recommended, for instance, if it is 5 gallons, add 1/2 tsp meta diluted in the wine or in water before you add it and mix gently, but well.