Re: wine, hydrogen sulfide, copper sulfate


Dances with Grapes wrote:
Greetings:

I just read at: http://www.jancisrobinson.com/winenews/winenews1214
"if you have a glass of wine showing some of these rotten egg,
sulfurous characteristics, putting a copper coin in the glass will
remove the hydrogen sulfide and display the true characters of the
wine"

Is this just hypothetically true? Could you plop a coin in and it would
take away the smells before you ate your food, or is this something
which would take hours or days to do?

Thank You
Robert
Hypothetically, sure. But this should never happen in commercially
produced wines, as the rest of your quoted article plainly states.
There are an abundance of methods, both ancient and traditional and
newer, more modern, sulfur reducing procedures. The article also
plainly states that a variety of tainted flavors and bad smells are
confused with H2S by novices, so the ol' penny trick is likely to be
overused in these old wives tales anyway.

This subject has come up often enough in my other favorite newsgroup --
rec.crafts.winemaking. Even the people there don't shove pennies into
their wine. There's better methods available even for hobbyists.

Now you mention food ... I'm guessing your considering reducing all H2S
flatulence production, by shoving pennies into foods. That won't work,
foods like eggs, cauliflower, etc already have reduced sulfur
compounds, that are later oxidized by intestinal flora to H2S, you
can't get it all removed with pennies. Nor should you try, you would
only succeed in depriving yourself of dietary sulfur, and give yourself
heavy metal poisoning from excess copper.

Now if I WAS going to use copper metal, I'd strip the insulation off of
some household electrical wire instead of using coinage. Coins are
alloys, often with high levels of zinc or other toxic metals. Wiring
is, by necessity, 99.99+% pure copper, 99.99+% pure copper.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: H2s odor still lingering
    ... Assuming for a minute that the problem is solely H2S, then Rick is likely ... leaving the fruit 'skins' in contact with the wine for too long can ... add a mustiness to wine. ... If copper is the way to go I'm more than willing to give it a try also ...
    (rec.crafts.winemaking)
  • Re: Hydrogen Sulfide - Rotten Egg Smell in Sauvigon Blanc
    ... Commercial wineries use copper sulfate for this purpose, but too much copper sulfate is toxic, so it must be done with caution. ... Also, some of the sulfur may be present in disulfide form, which smells like garlic or cooked cabbage. ... A simple way of removing H2S is to add enough copper sulfate to produce about 0.1 ppm of copper in the wine. ... The wine should be left undisturbed for several days after treatment so the copper sulfide will settle to the bottom of the container. ...
    (rec.crafts.winemaking)
  • Re: Sulphur Oil on Electronic Parts
    ... I found these, they aren't specifically about sulfur containing cutting oils, but they do indicate that sulfur is corrosive to copper and it's alloys: ... Copper and its alloys are susceptible to rapid attack in oxidizing acids, oxidizing heavy-metal salts, and sulfur and ammonia and their compounds. ...
    (alt.machines.cnc)
  • Re: Copper tubing and natural gas?
    ... Natural gas in copper pipe over some period of years causes copper ... sulfites which clogged up the pipe with hard, black crystallizations. ... It also appears that the sulfur added to the natural gas is corrosive ... technically speaking the previous poster is correct -- Sulfur IS ...
    (alt.home.repair)
  • Re: H2s odor still lingering
    ... I've never had this problem, but I've been told that racking through a short, thin length of copper tubing sometimes works, or drop a small piece of copper in the wine for a few hours. ... with the fermentation going reductive) may have led to some cap spoilage, if it started to dry out at any time during primary fermentation. ... leaving the fruit 'skins' in contact with the wine for too long can add a mustiness to wine. ...
    (rec.crafts.winemaking)
Quantcast