Dealing with the Acetone
Since Dave has already drunk half of his bottled wine, I asked if he had any acetone problems, and he said no. So, I checked one of the small bottles of extra merlot, and was very happy that there was no acetone odor or taste there. OK, then something happened to the carboy. I checked it again, and the acetone was definitely still there. I did a lot of research in my books and on winepress.us. It was not clear if this might be a fatal flaw, but there did seem to be some cures. The most info I found pointed to adding extra sulfite, so I stirred in ¼ tsp Kmeta and cleaned out the airlock. In fact, I decided to go ahead and clean out all of the airlocks, since these a few of these carboys had been sitting for a while now, and the sulfite in the airlock protecting that water from contamination dissipates over time. I wonder if that’s how this carboy got contaminated anyway.