I got my first bad smelling fermentation

I am currently running an IPA through for the woman. I used washed 05, first washed batch, shoulda made a starter, massive lag time, probably around 3 days. I opened the closet yesterday and saw that it was starting to foam, so no worries about it working. It was making some sounds through the blow off this morning, so i decided to take a look. I was assaulted by a stench that I can only imagine would be akin to a puree of smashed a**holes and rotting unicorn souls. I have heard of bad smelling ferments in the past, but I had no idea. Heres to hoping the stench dies off before the woman gets a whiff.

How old was the yeast? What did the yeast look like in the jar?

Is the smell sulphry? I recently made a wheat with some 2-month old 3rd-gen washed 1056 and, for the first time with that yeast, I got a huge sulphur smell but it went away in a couple days.

Or is the smell more like the garbage can in the alley in August?

The yeast was a week old, looked pretty good, nice white layer in the bottom of the mason jar. The smell is awful, like the stale, crusty smell you find in a bars beer storage room mixed with rotting garbage and some other nasty i just cant place. I would say burning flesh, but it doesn't have that nice bacony hint, kidding on this of course. I'm not worried about it, I've read some horror stories about rhino farts and whatnot so i figure its part of the process.

Rotting garbage is probably a bad sign, but you never know... yeast can do wonders cleaning up after even bacterial infections, if the yeast takes over strongly enough and kills the bacteria. The bacteria is probably a good source of yeast nutrient!

This is what I call optimistic thinking... the carboy is half-full, and whatnot.

winnph - Just to kill this internet rumor, our brewer's yeast cannot kill or eat bacteria. Period.

gomb - How does it taste? The smell of fermentation can be deceiving.

theredben said:

winnph - Just to kill this internet rumor, our brewer's yeast cannot kill or eat bacteria. Period.

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Well what I meant to say was as the alcohol content rises, many bacteria cannot survive. It's also my understanding that there are enzymes produced by yeast which allow it to metabolize dead cells -- yeast or bacteria -- as a source of nutrients. This was explained to me by a microbiologist who works with yeast, so I assumed it was true.

That works with other species of yeast, but not brewer's yeast.

theredben said:

That works with other species of yeast, but not brewer's yeast.

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Well this microbiologist works mostly with S. cerevisiae, and she was talking to me about the yeast in my homebrew (over a few homebrews), but I won't argue further, as my knowledge comes from a single conversation, so I accept its unreliability. I won't spread that rumor further!

I just pitched the yeast on Monday, so no tasting has been done. I should have made a starter (ordered a stirplate yesterday), so i figured that explained the lag time. This was my first time using washed yeast, so some oddities were expected. Like I said, i am not too woried about this whole thing, just wanted to state that I have joined the ranks of those with smelly ferments.

theredben said:

That works with other species of yeast, but not brewer's yeast.

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Sounds like a head in the sand approach

if the yeast was washed and pitched, did you pitch the whole yeast cake? you mentioned it was only a week old when pitched. If you pitched the whole cake of washed yeast that's only 1 week old, then you probably overpitched. you didn't need a starter, maybe something to rouse the yeast, but not a starter. starters are intended to grow the cell count, not get them going. how did you wash the yeast? how much did you pitch?

I washed the yeast per the directions in the sticky in this forum. The yeast i pitched was what dropped out in a 16oz mason jar. I believe i got 4 jars from the washing i did.

according to mr. malty, 16oz of thin slurry (you've just shaken and poured into the jar) is ~ 1.5x more than you need for a 5gal, 1060 beer. certainly not excessive...

I've just never had a stinky ferment in the 2 years I've brewed, caught me a bit off guard and wanted to share/***** about how bad it smelled in there haha.

Yeah, I've never had a rotting garbage and flesh smell from the airlock, either. I'd probably have shared/bitched about it, too... I think the worst I've had is some strong sulfur once or twice. I hope you come back and update us on the final product, so we can all know what to expect if we get that rotting-dumpster-in-Miami-in-August smell!

If this were some crazy Belgian strain I'd be more willing to just pass it off, but the fact that it's S05 is not good. I'd be really wary of this batch.

This is the 2nd run of this IPA, it is foul, nasty stuff! Of course i am not a fan of anything hoppy. Everyone else, they love the stuff so i will keep making it. The woman will have the final say on whether its bad or not. It just went into the BB on Monday so its at least a month before the first taste, warm and flat, and another month after before I crack a bottle, so I will return then and let you guys know that my beer was foul as expected and that everyone loved it haha.

kanzimonson said:

If this were some crazy Belgian strain I'd be more willing to just pass it off, but the fact that it's S05 is not good. I'd be really wary of this batch.

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Yeah that does worry me a touch since 05 is normally a really clean one, but I figure fermentation is a nasty thing sometimes and I should just ride this out.

I got home and cleaned the nasty blow off Growler I had in place and a lot of the smell backed off. Now it just smells like stale, dried beer, so I guess that's an improvement.

Do you have any update on how this came out? I just brewed a batch this weekend and noticed the same smells yesterday.

Anyone else experienced this smell? I just brewed an IPA and got the same smell.