wine diamonds????

[ksu_jinx]

Very new at the wine making game, and I'm sure I'm making lots of mistakes. I came across this forum when googling "white flakes in my homemade wine"
So, after reading for a few hours, do I have wine diamonds or flowers? Here is what I can tell you. 1 gallon of strawberry wine. I have no clue what my PH was/is. I know my Specific gravity was below .9999 when I racked it the first time, after fermentation. It had been 6 weeks so racked again to see if I could get the last of the settlement out before bottling it. Used the C. tablet and now have clear/white flakes floating in the carboy. It's been a week since second racking. Lastly, I live in Texas so no basement, my wine lives in a room that stays between 68-74 degrees. It doesn't look like an picture I could find of mycoderma. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[sour_grapes]

Welcome to WMT!

Here are some musings, but hopefully someone with more knowledge will chime in.

I don't think it can be wine diamonds. That term refers to potassium bitartrate. However, the principal acid in strawberries is citric acid. I am not 100% sure, but I do not think that there is an insoluble salt of citric acid that would precipitate out. Also, wine diamonds don't float, they sink.

My guess is that you are seeing floating chunks of the binder in Campden tablets. Did crush it, did you mix it with liquid first? You could treat another Campden tablet the same way, and then throw it into some water, and see if you get something that looks the same.

 

[Val-the-Brew-Gal]

I agree with @sour_grapes...I kind of think it's the Campden tablets. I've always had a devil of a time getting them to absorb into the wine, even with crushing. I know it's hard to measure k-meta for a one gallon batch so I understand using the tablets... they're just a pain in my opinion

 

[hounddawg]

I agree with sour_grapes and va-the-brew-gal,, that's why i use potassium metabisulfite in powder form,,, also known as K-meta. and i stir with a drill.
Dawg

 

[RichardC]

The only time I used campden tablets, there were white flecks floating in the wine. It freaked me out, so i scooped out as much as possible and added powdered Sodium metabisulphite.

 

[Bill Pet]

Since you need only 1/4 tsp kmeta for 5-6 gallons, it would seem hard to divide for 1 gallon. My solution: dissolve 1/4 tsp kmeta in some water (e.g. 5 fluid oz), use 1/5 (1 oz), and toss out the rest.