The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

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.