WineXpert Excess SO2

[bobleiker]

Hi All,


Embarrased to admit it but here is what happened....I'm making 30 gallons of Pinot Gris (Wine Expert Kits). I had 27 gallons clear and was letting last 3 gallons settle out to recover a couple more gallons of wine off of the sediment. I put about a cup of SO2 solution (concentration of2.5 tablespoons/gallon) into an emptycarboy and then racked 2.5 gallons of wineoff of the sediment into this carboy.....but I forgot to pour out the cup of SO2 from the carboy first. My question...can I use this 2.5 gallons of high SO2 wine to top off 5 carboys (about 1/2 gallon in each carboy) without damaging the whole batch...or should I dump the high SO2 wine.


Thanks,
Bob

 

[robie]

You can certainly use it for topping off. Never dump good wine!

If you think about it and do the math, you didn't put in as much SO2 as you might think, even at only 2.5 gallons. I forget the number of cups in a gallon (16??) and right now I can't stop to look it up. Anyway, one cup of your solution (which likely should be 3 tablespoons per gallon, not 2.5) would not contain a terribly high amount of SO2.

When you rack this wine in the future, and you should rack it a couple more times, just splash rack it really well. Introduce some oxygen into it and the SO2 will be used up. After a couple of splash rackings, give it a taste; that will be the definitive answer you need.

 

[jnmar]

If I did the math right, one cup (8 oz) of your 2 1/2 Tbl K-Meta/Gallon H2O solution in the 2.5 gal of wine would give you about 200 ppm SO2. I think that's probably close to 10 times higher than recommended. The good new is if you can indeed divide that between the other 25 or so gallons of wine it would get you down in the 20 ppm range for the whole batch.

I think I'm close to right on the calculations but you might ask someone else to double check the numbers.

 

[PeterZ]

2.5 Tb in a gallon is 7.5 tsp/gallon = .48 tsp per cup. Divided into 5 carboys = .09 tsp per carboy, well below the normal .25 tsp dosed every three to four months.