Odd smell in left hand brewing milk stout clone

Followed the recipe in clone brews for a Left Hand Brewing milk stout. Brew day went fine. Went to bottle it last night. When I popped the lid off the fermentor I poked my head in to take a whiff. I about got knocked down by the smell. I don't know how to describe it but it burned my nose and made my eyes water. We tried draining a couple ounces into a cup and tasting it but it was terrible. We decided to bottle a 12 pack to give to people as a joke and dump out the rest. Before we dumped it I got the idea to post here and ask about it. I started making a post but wanted to describe the taste better. I grabbed the cup we poured some in and tasted it again. This time it wasn't that bad. A very heavy coffee flavor, like drinking strong black coffee, but not that nose burning smell it had before. We decided to go ahead and bottle the rest and hope for the best.

Any ideas what caused that harsh smell? Think it'll be good after sitting in the bottles a couple weeks?

Recipe from the book is very close to this. The numbers are a bit different but not too far off. I don't have the book here at work to copy it exactly.

CO2 on top of a beer can burn the nose and take your breath away. A stout when uncarbonated tastes kinda like cold coffee, I think your problems are only related to inexperience and you just need to bottle this wait a while and get druck.

I'm hoping that is it. None of my other beers did that to me though. I usually do the same thing. I've enjoyed the smells of fresh beer before.

I'll just forget about it for a while and see how it is come time it's been bottle carbed

+1 to the CO2 burning your nose. That stuff really hurts if you get enough of it. One time I was at the Jack Daniels distillery and stuck my head over in the fermenter and I thought I'd burned my nostrils for good.