This smells terrible (White Labs Belgian)

This white labs belgian wit yeast smells awful fermenting. This is by far the worst smelling fermentation I've ever experienced. And of course the coolest room in the house is the home office closet so its setting in there while I work seeping toxic rhino farts into my work space.

Have you guys had that before with the White Labs Belgian?

Absolutely! And the fermentation took ages despite a 2L starter. My wit ended up being really light and sweeter than I had hoped. The sulfur smell vanished after about 2 weeks in the keg.

No starter, but fermentation took off in about 12 hours or less. My first allgrain ended up being much higher effency than I expected so my OG was 1.061 instead of 1.052, I think I was short about 1/4 -1/2 a gallon though, the better bottle I was using wasn't marked off like my glass carboys are. So that might actually account for it. But either way, I ended up grabbing a ton of sugar to ferment without the aid of malts so I'm pretty happy.

I used Wyeast 3944 Belgian Wit which is supposed to be the same yeast strain and it was pretty farty. That seems to be pretty typical of this yeast. I was actually fermenting a Bavarian Hefe at the same time so I was getting a double blast of farts.
I left it in the primary for 3 weeks and then bottled. This is one of the best tasting beers I have made so far.

I was doing the AHS Honey Hibiscus Wheat, so its kind of a flowery/herbal farty smell.
On the plus side, the wort, before fermenting was by the the most delicious wort I've ever tried, I could have popped a couple ice cubes into it and drank a whole glass. This will be quite a refreshing summer beer. Hopefully a big hit with the wife since I had buy a propane burner, 10 gallon port, copper to build a chiller, and propane tank to step up into all grain...

When I made my first Belgian, I thought I had an infection. The smell was terrible and the krausen was really fluffy and looked like snot. The beer that.came out in the end was fantastic though!

Ditto on the above. Made a 2 liter starter and took off pretty vigorously and smelled terrible. Checked it 10 days later and the fermentation had stalled about halfway through, so I shook it up and it took off again (gummed up the blowoff tube and popped the lid off my fermentation bucket). The partially fermented beer tastes great though, I will check it again this weekend.

aubiecat said:

I used Wyeast 3944 Belgian Wit which is supposed to be the same yeast strain and it was pretty farty. That seems to be pretty typical of this yeast. I was actually fermenting a Bavarian Hefe at the same time so I was getting a double blast of farts.
I left it in the primary for 3 weeks and then bottled. This is one of the best tasting beers I have made so far.

Click to expand...

I just bottled a Wit made with 3944 and as soon as I took the lid off the bucket I thought I had made a horrible mistake. It filled the house with the smell of rotten eggs. Tasted the gravity sample and it tasted awesome, so into bottles it went.

Yeah, just used it on a Belgian. Active fermentation for like 3 weeks, way more than any other beer i've brewed. When it came time to bottle, the smell coming out of the fermentor was aweful. I would have sworn someone took a s**t in the bucket and let it sit there for a month. I was scared to open it. When I did, the smell instantly went away and the beautiful nectar inside was amazing.

I tried it minutes after kegging it (un carbonated) and it was pretty bad, still a little sulfery, yeasty, and bitter.
36 hours later, its fully carbed, cleared up, and tastes amazing! The Honey Hibiscus Wheat is going to be a summer regular in my pipeline. It reminds me of a herbal carbonated iced tea.