Dear Wine Wizard, I made homebrewed beer for a long time, but during the last couple of years I have gravitated more towards making wine and mead. I know that it’s safe to use a copper coiled immersion wort chiller when making beer, but I was wondering if it’s safe to use one in boiled or pasteurized mead, wine, and other improvised brews in which the acid level is much higher than beer. I’m wondering if there is any danger of leaching too much copper and making a toxic or bad-tasting kind of strange brew? Rick Dingus Lubbock, Texas Wine Wizard replies: As I tend to think towards the experimental but also towards the cautious, let me answer your question with a warning, a suggestion, and a reality check. First, the warning: As copper is one of the more toxic heavy metals (along with lead, mercury and cadmium) that exist, it’s nothing to be trifled with. The BATF, along with other world-wide regulation boards, limits the amount of copper found in commercial wines to less than 0.5 mg/L.Copper residue (some
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