Making Homemade Wine and Beer: Rotten Egg Smell In Wine

Ever smelled rotten eggs when you racked your wine? We sure hope not, but if you have, your wine has been bitten by the dreaded hydrogen sulfide bug. No one wants to drink wine that smells like rotten eggs, so is there anything you can do to save the wine? You bet. Better yet, we'll offer some tips that should help you avoid the problem in the first place.

Pee-Yew!
Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) usually forms at the end of fermentation, but most home winemakers won't notice a smelly problem until the first racking. If you do smell rotten eggs, the quicker you can act, you'll increase the chances of saving your wine. If you tarry too long before treating the wine, hydrogen sulfide will react with other carbon compounds in the wine to create mercaptans, and later into disulfides. These boogers are extremely difficult to remove from your wine once formed, so the faster you can detect and treat your wine for hydrogen sulfide, the better!

Read how to fix it.