Sulphur from slanted yeast

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bob3000

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Hi I have been buying yeast slants from brewlabs, a british company. Each one i have used has left the same sulphurous flavour in the beer. I bottled one and it got worse and worse so I thought my sanitation wasn't up to speed. So for the next one i used a pressure cooker to sterilise all wort and containers for stepping up and used yeast nutrient. I have used a 10ml , 100ml, 1 litre, starter step up.

I have one in the keg and it is good but the taste is still in the background. The one in the fermenter is really sulphery. All the different yeasts are different strains so it isn't a yeast specific thing.

Any one know what is going on?
 
What type of yeasts, ale or lager? What's your process when using these slants? What gravity beers were you brewing, and what was fermentation like, including temperature. If you were brewing with lager yeasts what was your pitch rate, temps and how long did you lager?

Sulphur can be a byproduct of stressed yeast. I personally would be inclined to plate out and reslant any slants I received from a third party.
 
They where all english ale yeast fermented at 18c to make OG 1.050ish beers. Process is as mentioned. Growing up from 10ml to 100ml to 1.5l starter(no stir plate). Also I don't have much equipment to use slants so instead of using a loop to transfer yeast into wort i just sloshed some wort around the slant.
 
Your temp looks fine, but I think you severely under pitched. Assuming a 5gal batch of 1.050 your target is 179 billion cells. I can't imagine your slant having more than 2B cells and you only did intermittent shaking your starters would look like this.

10ml 2.72 Billion cells 0.7 Growth Rate
100ml 9.39 Billion Cells 2.45 Growth Rate
1.5L 63.81 Billion Cells 5.79 Growth Rate.

Again, this is all fuzzy math based on estimates. I personally wouldn't jump more than 10x volume in any one step. Without a stirplate I think you're going to have to do many more step starters and larger starters, unfortunately each transfer increases the chance of contamination.

I personally plan to go Slant -> 24ml -> 200ml -> 800ml -> 1L - 2L with the last three steps all on a stir plate. The final step depending on size should get me between 275-370Billion cells. Without a way to do cell counts it's impossible to get exact numbers.
 
Ok Thanks Jukas. Another piece of kit needed eh? I guess i'll just stick to liquid and dry yeast for a bit.

Any fixes for my beer now? I did add some sugar with the hope of driving off some of the sulpher. Maybe just stressed the yeasts more.
 
Some of the english ale yeasts do produce a sulphur smell during normal fermentation. The fix seems to be to allow it to stay in the fermenter a few weeks longer after fermentation is complete and it ages out.
 
my 2nd beer has got better with time. i went ahead and put some sugar in the latest and this does seem to have helped, but it is quite dry and a little sharp. hopefully with another week in fermenter it will be ok.
 
my 2nd beer has got better with time. i went ahead and put some sugar in the latest and this does seem to have helped, but it is quite dry and a little sharp. hopefully with another week in fermenter it will be ok.

Adding sugar is going to dry the beer out and boost the Alcohol as well as increase the risk of fusel compounds.

If they're still in the primary you could try boosting the temp to 20c - 21c and give the yeast a chance to do some cleanup. If they've already been kegged you could always try lagering them for 1 week per 10pts of OG.
 
Adding sugar is going to dry the beer out and boost the Alcohol as well as increase the risk of fusel compounds.

If they're still in the primary you could try boosting the temp to 20c - 21c and give the yeast a chance to do some cleanup. If they've already been kegged you could always try lagering them for 1 week per 10pts of OG.

My thinking was some vigorous fermentation would drive off the sulphur. And it does seem to have worked, but now i just have a new problem, tastes really cidery. Should have just left it alone. I always do this:(
Hopefully in a week or two it will have sorted its self out. i also put some dry hops in so they might mask it a little.
 
My thinking was some vigorous fermentation would drive off the sulphur. And it does seem to have worked, but now i just have a new problem, tastes really cidery. Should have just left it alone. I always do this:(
Hopefully in a week or two it will have sorted its self out. i also put some dry hops in so they might mask it a little.

You have everything to gain, and very little to lose by leaving it alone for a while. Is it still in primary? If so try and keep it around 20c (68F) and maybe give it a gentle swirl to stir some of the yeast back up into suspension for 10 days or so. If it's already kegged and on gas, leave it alone for 4 weeks to cold condition.
 
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