Irish red - need help with a sulfur odor

[cjbalough]

About a month ago I started an Irish red - 5 gal all grain (9lb pale, 2lb Vienna, 6oz each - Crystal 40 &120, and 4oz roasted barley), harvested white labs 007, fermented at 65ish- it fermented strong for about 5 days, going from about 1.058 down to 1.010. But it has had a strong sulfor odor to it. About 10 days in I pulled it from my heated swamp cooler and let it drop to basement temp (55 -60 ), about a week ago - still strong odors- and the swamp cooler freed up, so I dropped it back in there and brought the temp up to 70.

The odor has dissipated quite a bit but is still there. I need help on the next step. Should I give it another week at the warm temp?, crash cool it? Let it go back to basement temps? Pull it off the yeast and secondary it? I'm hoping to have it ready for St Patrick's day, or at least for the family Easter dinner an need to allow time for bottle conditioning.

 

[kingwood-kid]

This happened to me once, apparently as a result of underpitching and fermenting at the bottom of the yeast's temp range. The good news is that it's an easy fix. Boil 3-5 ounces of table sugar and add it to the beer at 70F. The resulting CO2 should blow off most of the sulfur in a few days. Then you're good to crash-cool. If you keg, you could probably just blow a bunch of CO2 into the beer to get the same effect.

 

[cjbalough]

Thanks, that makes sense to help expedite off gassing/strip the sulfur away.

 

[Gerhardt]

Depending on the yeast strain and conditions, the production of sulfur compounds is totally normal. The use of additional sugar will purge any sulfur containing gasses from the headspace but won't actually remove any compounds dissolved in the beer. Yeast is very good at cleaning up sulfur compounds, so it's not concerning. If you have sulfur flavors, just give it more time and it will resolve as the yeast continues to scavenge.

 

[mabrungard]

Sulfur odor is common in some yeast strains. However, another cause can be your water. If your brewery equipment has no copper metal anywhere in it, the brewing water might not have enough dissolved copper to help remove those sulfurous compounds. Putting a short piece of copper tube in your boil kettle can provide all the copper your wort needs to avoid this problem. You can also sanitize a short length of copper tube and lower it on a string into your beer for a few minutes and that has been proven to help knock out sulfur from beer.

 

[cjbalough]

Interesting takes.....I'm leaning to adding the sugar to expedite things. Can only help move the dissolved and free gas phase sulfur compounds. Doubt it was a lack of copper as I do use a copper immersion cooler. I'm prety sure it'll clear on its own, but would really like to help it along, would like to get it bottled next weekend.