sulphur smell trapped in bottles or conditioned away?

Yesterday I bottled up a beer that still had a just little bit of a sulphur odor (used the 3068 weizen yeast). I did so under the presumption that whatever sulphur was left would just condition right out of the beer while they carb up at warm temps.....but this morning I got to thinking.....

Did I trap the sulphur gases inside the bottles? Does it have to be vented away or will the yeasts chew it up over time? Is there anything I can do in case the former is true?

Oh, and I should mention that the beer is otherwise completely mouthwatering and delicious.

i cant really answer your questions but i can offer some advice and a guess. i am guessing that when you brewed your beer you boiled with a lid on the pot. right? if so don't do that. during the brewing process sulfur compounds are made in a predictable progression and are carried away by the water vapor. if the vapor has nowhere to go it will of course fall back into the beer along with the sulfur passably giving you the sulfur smells you are getting now.

you should be ok. i bottled a hefe about 3 or 4 weeks ago, and at one week it had that sulfur smell and a weird sulfur aftertaste. i went on vacation and came back a week and a half later and this was almost non existant. now its the best brew ive brewed so far. so you should be good.

TipsyDragon said:

i cant really answer your questions but i can offer some advice and a guess. i am guessing that when you brewed your beer you boiled with a lid on the pot. right? if so don't do that. during the brewing process sulfur compounds are made in a predictable progression and are carried away by the water vapor. if the vapor has nowhere to go it will of course fall back into the beer along with the sulfur passably giving you the sulfur smells you are getting now.

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Thanks Tipsy, but you guessed wrong. :cross: I would never boil with the lid on. The sulphur smell didn't appear until fermentation started to wrap itself up, actually. This was the second time I've used the WLP300 yeast, and I ran it at 62 degrees this time to minimize the banana (and because Jamil Z. recommends that, so I thought I'd try it).....I think maybe the low temps helped create the hydrogen-sulphide in this brew.

At any rate, I know that leaving your brew in the fermentor will allow the sulphur action to clear out, but I am/was a little worried about closing it off in the bottles, like maybe it wouldn't be able to vent out and would just stay in there.....it sounds like that's not the case, though.

I made a brown ale and bottled after about 20 days in the primary. When I opened the primary to bottle, it smelled little like some H2S. I bottled anyway because the gravity had tapered off. I thought the same thing that the beer would smell like this. After a couple weeks, the smell was noticeable, and after about a month the smell was gone.


So your answer is NO. The smell will dissipate after given enough time.

I was told that the yeast did not have time to clean itself up.

You live and you learn.

Another reason why I secondary even my Hefe Weizens...