Kettle Sour gone bad?

Two days into a kettle sour and it has an intense rotten egg and slight cream corn smell. The cream corn smell is normal based on prior test batches, but the rotten egg smell has me concerned. Has anyone experienced a rotten egg smell and produced a good sour from it? Any chance this will dissipate after a full boil?

It may be my hopeful bias, but now three days in, the smell seems to be lessened somewhat. Still present though.

Here's the process used: Mashed as normal a pale ale recipe, boiled for 5 minutes, then cooled to and held at 115 F. Added lacto culture, then adjusted pH to 4.5. Sealed top of kettle with saran wrap and placed lid on kettle to hold. Purged air from kettle by pushing CO2 through the kettle drain.

The lacto culture was created from grain about a month earlier. It was used to create one successful sour test batch already, so i know it was viable. However, after refrigerating for a month, I probably should have created a new starter from it instead of direct pitching it. I thought it might be fine because it smelled great, like grape must, and I could see the lacto floating in it.

Here's a pic of the refridgerated lacto cultures. I assume the bottom must be flocc'd wild yeast, and right above that the lacto floating about. Really haven't a clue though.

So the intense rotten egg smell slowly dissipated over the week that I had it kettle souring, revealing a subtle apple sauce and grape must smell similar to the lacto culture at the end. I imagine that the rotten egg smell was from the wild yeast in there too, pumping out DMS and sulfur trapped in the kettle head space every time I blasted some more CO2 through the kettle.

I proceeded to boil the batch. No trace of the offending smells remained during the boil, but a sour boil can sure burn the nostrils a bit. I hope the acidic steam doesn't peel the paint off my garage walls. The unhopped wort tasted like barnyard and sweet tarts upon sampling. I then hopped, cooled, aerated, and transferred to the fermentor.

So far so good I think.

Just an update. Beer was hopped with Cascade, Galaxy, and Citra (dry hop) and fermented with Omega DIPA (Vermont/Conan) for 3 weeks and then kegged. Actually turned out very nice. Strong pineapple and Citrus aroma. Sour Citrus taste, but still retained the pale ale character in the background. Fairly balanced but perhaps maybe a bit too sour. A week souring was probably unnecessary, but that's just how my schedule worked out. Brought it to a local Homebrew Club and it was well received.

So the moral of the story is, some times good beer can smell bad.

SwitchbladeSquirrel said:

Just an update. Beer was hopped with Cascade, Galaxy, and Citra (dry hop) and fermented with Omega DIPA (Vermont/Conan) for 3 weeks and then kegged. Actually turned out very nice. Strong pineapple and Citrus aroma. Sour Citrus taste, but still retained the pale ale character in the background. Fairly balanced but perhaps maybe a bit too sour. A week souring was probably unnecessary, but that's just how my schedule worked out. Brought it to a local Homebrew Club and it was well received.

So the moral of the story is, some times good beer can smell bad.

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Sorry no one followed up with you on this thread. Lacto can be a tricky little beast and you always wonder if something else was involved. Thanks for completing the thread though with your experience and results.