Newby needs help with "hazy" juice?

[Cash Peters]

Good morning ladies and gents, total newb here working on my first ever batch. It's a Grenache that I picked the grapes local. Some back ground: I picked the grapes, five 5 gallon buckets full. It took me about 48 hours from picking from the vine to have all the grapes de-stemmed, crushed and in brewing buckets (yield about 12 gallons of crushed fruit). I treated each bucket for 24 hours with camden tablets before adding the yeast. They are all fermenting well (have been for about 48 hours or so) but I noticed that one of the buckets seems to have a "haze" to the bubbles when I press the grapes back down into the juice in the buckets (have been doing so about 3 times/day). Is this something I should worry about? Any ideas what it may be and how to possibly treat if necessary? I can post some pictures later today if that will help. Thanks in advance for any advice/help.

 

[beano]

No need to worry. Its still fermenting and will do so for at least a few weeks yet. I'm not a grape person but hopefully someone who is will help you along with this.

 

[Cash Peters]

Well thats good to hear, just seems strange that it's only in one bucket, the other two look pretty clear. I will try to get pictures up later

 

[Cash Peters]

View media item 4676 So it looks like I may have jumped the gun on worrying about this... As I pushed all the grapes back under the liquid level this afternoon, I noticed that now all 3 buckets have the same haziness on the juice bubbles. Is this a normal part of the process or do I now have an issue with all 3 buckets? Haha. Thanks!

 

[mainshipfred]

You're good, different yeast react differently with the must. From what I can see in the pic it looks like a good fermentation.

 

[Cash Peters]

Awesome! Thanks!

 

[Cash Peters]

Alright folks, rookie back here. Everything SEEMS to be going well, I've had the brew in the final glass fermentation containers for a while now and the fermentation seems to be nearing completion. Here's the issue, I already pulled the brew out of their glass containers (one 5 gallon carboy and three 1 gallon jugs all fitted with airlocks) and dumped the sediment, washed the containers and re-racked. There is another sediment layer in the jugs now, and yesterday I cracked a couple open and gave a little whiff; fart smell. I know that some level of sulfur is normal or even required? But I tried to do a bit of research here and just got a little more lost: talk of copper, aeration, etc... So my question is this: Should I re-rack again to get rid of as much sediment as possible and just give the wine time and hope the smell settles out? Is further or other action required of me? Is the whole batch ruined? Let me know if any pictures or further info would be helpful. Thanks

 

[crabjoe]

I cracked a couple open and gave a little whiff; fart smell.

I'm new myself and when I had a similar issue with my 1st SP batch, I was told to splash rack it also add yeast nutrients. All the copper stuff is really of last resort.

For me, the splash racking helped reduced the odor. Mine smelled like rubber. What really got rid of it was the yeast nutrients. From my understanding, the odor occurs because the yeast are stressed.

Being you should be finished or near the end of your fermentation, you might just want to splash rack. What's your hydrometer showing?

 

[Cash Peters]

Hydrometer is at .993. I’m unfamiliar with splash racking, can you elaborate?

 

[crabjoe]

Hydrometer is at .993. I’m unfamiliar with splash racking, can you elaborate?

Basically, you're going to do something to it that you're told not to do. You're going to splash the wine. But before you do, make sure you sulfate the wine.

Here's a good video on different things you can do when you have the odor.



Here's a video of splash racking but it's being done with a vacuum pump.

 

[Ajmassa]

Yep. Rotten egg smell after fermentation - aka h2s Hydrogen sulphide.
Copper removes it. But introducing copper is dangerous without control of amounts. That’s why most people use a product called Reduless which is a controlled version of copper sulfate sorta.
Either way - reduless is further down the checklist. o2 will help blow off the smell a lot. Rack- leave behind the sediment and let the wine splash into the receiving vessel. You should definitely notice an improvement.