Bee Pollen Stings Cider Krausen

Hi. I've been making some 1 gallon test batches of cider with organic flash pasteurized juice and Safale 04. The only adjunct was a 12 oz can of organic apple juice concentrate. Was reading about bee pollen as a nutrient so I pitched some after about three days of fermentation when things started smelling a wee sulfury. The krausen was really just a one inch layer of nice bubbles at that point, but after 1 teaspoon of pollen, it vanished completely. Curiously, its still fermenting strong a day later (bubbles in the airlock every 3 seconds or so) but the bubbly head has yet to return.

The sulfur smell is gone, but I'm curious as to what else the pollen did...?

three days later and cider looks the same. smells great though. i've been bottling my ciders and carbonating with residual sugar, then pasteurizing. i've been getting a nice 'head' on these ciders when i pour them into a glass. i have a feeling this one won't have it. i'll report later.

oh, and i said 'safale 04' when in fact this was trub from previous batch of 3068..

I've read that wine can sometimes get a sulfur like smell from being stressed. Maybe the nutrient just gave it the proper environment to thrive. I have also read that ciders can give off a sulfur like smell normally. My last cider did and seems to be fine.

I wasn't thrown off so much by the smell, which I'm learning is pretty common in cider making, it was how it changed the look of the head, or layer of bubbles that remains after the little krausen has dropped.

It's going along fine though, and I tasted it today and it tastes really good. It just needs to go a couple more days I suspect. Will probably turn out great, but I'm going to see this batch all the way through before I use bee pollen again.

i find cider krausen to be a far more odd creature than its beer counterpart, last week i checked on a cider about 1 week into fermentation, and it had about 2-3 cm of foam, when i came back an hour later the foam was completely (completely!) gone. i didn't even touch the carboy, let alone add anything. so it could be chance timing alone that the pollen and head removal occurred simultaneously. more likely to me is that there is a small amount of oil in the pollen which affected the surface tension of the cider, like how the faintest trace of oil will kill beer foam.
how bout them apples