smell in primary, gas on top of beer

hi everyone, spent 30 minutes trying to find a similar post on this smell, but couldn't...should have posted this about a week ago, but oh well...

I transferred an AG batch of a rogue dead guy ale clone to secondary 2 fridays ago, and when i popped the lid, the smell was awful. somewhere between bad everclear and rubbing alcohol.

i didn't "taste" the beer, but the smell seemed to just be stuck in the gas sitting on the beer - when i transferred and took one last smell of the batch, it smelled fine.

i've never had an experience with infected beer, but my batch still didn't resemble one that was infected (no floating white colonies...still looked like beer). and there doesn't appear to be an alcohol smell coming out of the airlock in secondary.

I'm bottling it Saturday and will probably just RDWHAHB (it's my 6-7 batch - i'm a little more patient nowadays), but i was wondering if anyone has experienced a bad smell like this...

Sounds like you got a wiff of the CO2 layer sitting on top of your beer. Perfectly normal. Probably gave a burning sensation in your nose?

Yep. It's normal. I forgot once and took a big whiff trying to see what it smelled like, bad idea.

thanks guys, this site is the best

I put my primary in a water bath in the guest bathroom to keep it cool. After a night of sitting in the bathtub with the door closed, I woke up to discover an awful smell. Initially I blamed it on SWMBO (bad mistake), and she blamed it on the brew. Utilizing my man pride, I promptly defended the brew. Come to find out, it was indeed the brew. The smell in the bathroom was awful. Took the airlock off, smelled the brew itself after the CO2 cleared, it smelled great.

Point -- Don't judge a brew by the initial smell. Let it ride, primary and secondary if you choose, bottle, condition, then RDWHAHB.