Sulfur smell and taste from AG batches.

Hi all.

Since I do AG I get a very unpleasent taste and aroma in my beers. The this smells and tastes a bit like sulfur. I'm getting discouraged since my LME/DME batches are really good.

I wonder what I do wrong.

First I tough it might be DMS but I do whatever it takes to avoid it and I confirmed with a homebrew shop owner that it isn't DMS or any other infection.

Then I started to think it's the yeast fermentation in high temperatures that gives this awful aroma ... I ferment in a room temperature and it was very hot lately.

I also suspected bad mashing program but I also confirmed it isn't the case.

I also start to think that my plastic fermenters from Speidel that have a permanent hop/yeast smell and I can't get rid of it but since I clean it to the bone I thought that the plastic will just have this aroma. (I clean it but with a soft sponge not to leave any scratches).

Tomorrow I will brew again and before I do I wish your opinions what that sulfur smell and taste can come from and what I can do.

Fermenting over the optimum temperature for the yeast will cause all sorts of off flavors. Sulfur could possibly be one of them.

A temperature controlled refrigerator or freezer is an ideal, albeit expensive, method of controlling the temperature of the fermenting wort. As the yeast works heat is produced. The fermenting wort temperature will be 3°F to 10°F above the ambient temperature depending upon the OG of the wort.. A swamp cooler is a more economical way to keep the wort cool. The addition of a fan and plastic soda bottles filled with ice will cool even more.

Certain yeasts will put off a sulfur aroma during fermentation. This aroma will disappear from the primary after active fermentation is complete and the beer is left to rest in the primary. What yeasts are you using when you have the sulfur smell?

Three things come to mind:

Water: What's the water like? Are you using chlorinated tap water? Do you know what the water profile is, and are you adding any minerals/acids etc. to it?

Yeast: What kind of yeast are you using and what are the temps?

Sanitation: What sanitizer are you using?

What is the mashing program you mentioned?

Thanks for the reponses.

The temperature was and is still a bit over 75°F

Yeast that gave me a lot of sulfur was Lallemand's Belle Saison and I got some of the sulfur from Lallemand's West Coast.

Water is the tap water but I used it with LME without any sulfur. With AG I add acidic malts.

I brew with Braumeister and the program I mentioned is about 55m at 63°C (145°F) and then 30m at 164°F then 5m at 194°F and then I sparge with 190°F.

I use PBW for cleanning and Star San for desinfection. I also use hot water inbetween.

I don't do secondary. Promary lasts about 3 weeks before I bottle. The sulfur accures allready after a day or two in the fermenter and then it just lasts.

Add another vote for water. I would do everything you usually do, but I would go get some RO water from the store. You can usually get it in 5 gallons out of those machines that you put a quarter or two in and watch it fill. Note that this is not the same as bottled spring water.

If you think it is the yeast, then try a common dry yeast such as S-05 and pitch it without rehydrating. That way you can report back with exactly what is going on and the fine people on this forum can help you track it down better.

Personally, I would try using different water and see what happens. Good luck!

I'll buy the mineral water for tomorrow's batch. There is one decent and cheap with ph6.

I don't know if I have US-05 left. Any other reference yeast you propose ?

And is it normal I can't get rid of the fermentation smell from plastic fermenters?

The book that I use attributes sulfur to the malting process so it makes sense that you'd get it from an AG brew. The recommended fix is to cool the wort quickly and do so at least partially uncovered.

Maybe someone who uses the same brewing system You use can be of better help. I single step mash in a 10 gallon cooler and sparge. Maybe the issue you are having is unique to your system.

As for the yeast, I use US-05 and Nottingham almost exclusively for dry yeast. I would try te cleanest fermenting yeast you have available, try to keep it at the low end of the range, and see what happens. I used the west coast one time for a wookey jack clone with good results. I do recall that with the west coast I noticed some off smells that could be described as sulfur during fermentation, but nothing that made it to the bottle.

Maybe try making a SMaSH and see if you have the same issue?

I do my best to cool quickly. I drop to 140 in couple of minutes. Then it's longer but hole process doesn't last longer then 30 minutes.

I was suspecting mashing errors but couldn't imagine what exactly. This time I will mash at around 150°F for 90 minutes only and then sparge. This way I emulate typical mashing I see in most of the recipes.

This batch will be a different mash, mineral water, I was also thinking a real yeast starter…. And the weather is getting better (I mean colder) so the fermentation temp. should be lower.

…and what do you mean partially uncovered ? I use a submerged chiller so it is uncovered ?1

I presume it needs to be uncovered so that sulfury gases can escape and not condense back into the wort.

I will try that too. I only wonder even if they get into the wort wouldn't they get released while boiling as DMS does ?

Sulfur (burnt match and hydrogen sulfide) odors during and just after fermentation are perfectly normal. They are a major constituent of 'Jungbuket' which as the name suggests, should pass after a couple of weeks of conditioning. The extent of the 'problem' is highly depended on yeast strain. The lager yeasts in particular are famous for the 'smells like a paper mill in there' comments (to be honest I have never smelled a paper mill but that's the phrase one brewing buddy likes to use).

Now if Jungbuket does not disappear in a couple of weeks then something else is wrong and you need to look further. Infection would be my first guess. Yeast will take sulfur from gypseous waters but they have plenty to work with from other sources (malt) in mash so I wouldn't worry too much about the sulfate content of the water.

Definitely fermenting too high... 75 degrees, plus the heat that the yeast makes will get you up over 80 degrees in the fermenter easily.
IMHO, the two biggest improvement one can make for creating good repeatable beer is proper pitch rate, and temperature control of the fermentation.

Do you use a stainless steel wort chiller?

I have the stainless one from Braumeister. Why ?

Soon going to check the fermenting wort after two days if there is any sulfur aroma/taste like the last few times.

Just to add that this sulfur was detectable from already in the beginning of the fermentation and it stayed that way till the bottling. It's still there (but much less) after 5weeks in the bottles.

most of my brews this year were saisons and hefes WLP565 and wyeast 3068. both had strong sulfur smells when they were "blowing up" in active fermentation. Those smells dissipated shortly after the fermentation was complete. I let the saison sit for a month in the primary. 3 weeks for the hefes. both styles came out great. both yeasts can handle high fermentation temps without causing too much of an issue in terms of unwanted flavors. fermented both in a 78 degree room.

Sulfur aroma is often the result of insufficient copper ion content in the brewing water. Copper complexes with sulfurous compounds that precipitate out of solution. Your all stainless Braumeister system probably has no copper components.

To correct the problem, add a several centimeters of copper tubing to your boil kettle so that the wort is infused with some copper. If you have some finished beers with this sulfur problem, you can sanitize a length of copper tubing and leave it in contact with the beer for several minutes and that should introduce enough copper for the reaction to occur. I can't say how long 'several' is, but keep the tubing in there long enough to make a difference in the aroma. Be aware that beer is more acidic than wort and you CAN overdo the copper treatment in the beer. You CAN'T overdo the treatment when you have a piece of copper in the boil kettle. PS: this means that you should add the piece to the kettle!

Good info!

This batch that I brewed this Sunday was with a mineral water and I have no sulfur as last time with tap water. Although it's still yeasty and a bit corn like. It's also very young and I suspect the yeast is stressed since I haven't rehydrated it.

What Martin said. I also soak my copper chiller in StarSan for 15 minutes prior to use to remove the oxide coating from the surface of the copper in order to allow free copper to be able to leach into the wort...

Another thing, if you're already past the boil, there is a way to correct any sulfur smellsand/or flavors in your beer. I once noticed a sulfur smell, and worse, a strong sulfur taste in an IPA that I was racking to secondary in preparation for dry hopping. A clean and sanitized copper pipe fitting (like a 3/4" pipe coupler) suspended into the carboy on a piece of sanitized, unflavored dental floss for a couple of days cured the problem. (It went on to be my best-tasting IPA to date...)

http://www.homedepot.com/p/NIBCO-3-4-in-Copper-Pressure-C-x-C-Coupling-with-Stop-C600HD34/100343588?N=5yc1vZbuu2Z1z114xd

As for beer already in the bottle, wine drinkers use a clean, shiny copper penny in the glass to remove offensive sulfur aromas and flavors. Stirring with a real silver spoon will work as well.

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/sulfur/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

What! No mint or cinnamon flavored floss????

When I was using an immersion chiller, I found that the hot wort took the oxidized copper right off. So it's probably unnecessary to pre-soak in StarSan.

Sulfur compounds (like DMS) are highly volatile, so there is another very common method for removing them post-fermentation, and it's called CO2 scrubbing. The concept is to bubble CO2 through your beer and let it gas off the sulfur compounds. You need to keg to do it, so bottling it won't work for. If you do keg, just hook up your gas to the liquid side and push CO2 back in through the liquid post and open the pressure release. This will bubble through the beer and carry off volatile compounds. Be sure to do it at room temp, doesn't work as well cold. I've used this technique to successfully reduce DMS in light lagers before by doing it for a few minutes each day over a few days. The primary advantage to this technique is that you can correct this issue in a fairly sanitary way post-fermentation. The disadvantage is that you may also gas off other, desirable volatile compounds like hop oils that give the beer hop aroma/flavor, so it may not work as well for an IPA as it does for light lagers.

Really great stuff guys.

My batch turned out without that sulfur I had in mind. I think it's the tap water that did it (and of course the temp).

My new batch is with low ph (6,2) mineral water (low on minerals).

Although I did not dehydrate the yeast, just sprinkled it on top of the foam that formed during the transfer to the fermenter.

Unfortunately the beer seam to went south and now it smells sour cabbage ! Why can't I make a proper AG batch. I feel worthless ...

Next batch I will do a proper starter and continue with the mineral water.

FWIW, I experienced the same sulfur smell using this yeast after fermenting in a 78F degree kitchen. After several weeks in a keg on gas, I tried lightly shaking the keg and venting off the gas a few times, then putting it back on CO2, and after that it was delicious.