Can anyone identify this?

[BrowserUk]

I've just transferred my apple wine from the FV to demijohns and when cleaning the fv, I found the red & black "sand grains" shown in the following picture:

http://imagebin.org/290966 (*)

Since none of the ingredients -- apples, lemon rind and juice, pectolaise, sugar, water, yeast, nutrient -- is either red or black, it caught my eye.

Any thoughts what it might be?

Cheers, Buk.

(*)I tried wrapping the url in and to no effect.

I also tried selecting it and clicking the buttons above, but none of them seemed to do a damn thing?

 

[LeithR]

Hi there,
I can understand your irritation. You have to use the Img to post pictures, at least I have to from Photobucket.

p.s. they look like crystals of something, sugar possibly, are they sweet, do they taste of anything?

 

[winnywood]

Did you add yeast nutrient?

 

[BrowserUk]

they look like crystals of something, sugar possibly, are they sweet, do they taste of anything?

Not sweet. Gritty, maybe a little chalky.

They do crush quite easily to a powder, and under a magnifying glass they are white inside, the red/black/rust coloration is only on the surface.

I used Young's Super Yeast compound that in addition to the yeast contains nutrient (unspecifed) and bentonite.

Looking at the dry contents of the pot, there are buff coloured cylinders -- the yeast --, grey-white irregular shaped grains -- the bentonite -- and translucent white, regular shaped crystals -- which must be the nutrient.

Looking at images on-line, the nutrient is almost certainly Diammonium Phosphate.

And comparing them side by side, with the exception of the color, the red-black grains are obviously the same thing.

I wonder what imparts the red colouration?

Cheers, Buk.

 

[winnywood]

I had this once when making a wine kit I put it down to using cold water and the nutrient not desolveing. I wouldn't worry about it because my wine was really nice.

 

[tonyhibbett]

I would say tartrate crystals, but since apple juice contains no tartaric acid...

 

[rosie]

Yeast nutrient, put some nutrient in clean water and you will see the same grains.

 

[tonyhibbett]

I have noticed all sorts of disturbing debris appearing in a range of my wines and much more frequently than ever before. This includes kits. I can only conclude that this is due to pollution of the natural ingredients, and possibly the water too. It used to be the case that it was safer to drink alcoholic beverages, gin for example, than water, because fermentation and distillation would remove harmful contaminants and deposit them in the sediment.

 

[tonyhibbett]

The black bits are from the Superwine yeast compound. Every time I use this stuff, I end up with them. They are not present in the compound itself, but rapidly form once fermentation commences and settle on the bottom. This does not happen with any other yeasts I have used. I used to think these were undissolved yeast, but they never dissolve.