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Please help me saving this egg fart smell melomel!

Barrel Char Wood Products
J

jeewon0516

Guest
Guest
10lb acacia honey
3.8gallon water
fermivin 7013
DAP 3.5gram
starting brix 22

Added 20lb fresh strawberry after about 10weeks.

The fermentation restarted and I noticed egg fart smell which wasn't there.
I was naive enough not to look up any information about it and kinda hoped it would go away.

Then about 4months later, that foul smell is still there and it is undrinkable.
I'm guessing my mead is having sulfur issue.

I tried hard stirring and splash recking. Which reduced the smell but it is still present.
I do not want to run it through copper because I'm scared of toxic chemical from coppoer corrosion due to low ph.

Is there anything I can do about it? Is patiently waiting for a year good treatment for it?

Thank you masters!
 

dingurth

Worker Bee
Registered Member
May 23, 2012
489
3
18
Brooklyn , NY
You don't have to worry about copper toxicity. You'd have to leave a lot of copper in for a long time in order for that to happen. Usually you only leave copper in 12-48 hours max. The bigger possible problem when adding copper is getting copper haze in your must, that no amount of time or fining agents will help clear. And that happens long before it becomes toxic.

You can do a quick test. Get just a single glass of your mead and put a copper penny (cleaned and sanitized) into it, or any other piece of copper, like wire. The sulfur smell should go away almost immediately. If it does not, you're in trouble.

The problem is that you've left it sitting for many months with a sulfur smell. This may have given the sulfur compounds time to become bigger chemical chains that won't go away with just copper alone. At this point you'd have to add ascorbic acid (vitamin c) to your must in addition to copper, but this process will take many months to get the sulfur out. Having not had to go that far before, I'm not sure if you'd leave the vitamin c in for months to do its job and then add copper, or have them both in for that long.

To answer your question though, time will not help it go away, and could even make it worse depending on the exact nature of your sulfur problem.
 
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