Help! Awful smell from carboy

[gurrback]

Hi there,

A while ago I inquired about brewing beer and transporting it without yeast. The general response was that it's fine to transport a batch of wort as long as it's sealed. So this weekend a friend and I brewed a few batches of beer and put the cooled wort in a carboy.

Due to circumstance I was not able to add the yeast until tonight, and when I opened the carboy to aerate and pitch my yeast, the smell was overwhelming. It's a very heavy sulpher/rancid stench that I haven't smelled before. Keep in mind I HAVE NOT added the yeast yet. It has been sitting in a thoroughly sanitized glass carboys for slightly less than 48 hours.

A few things went wrong with this batch and we introduced a few new variables so this may be a complicated one.

1. While brewing, forgot to add 3lb of yeast at the 15min to go mark and ended up adding to wort around 100F.

2. beer sat without yeast for 48 hours

3. Used cork bung - first time using this. Now I can see that plenty of bacteria can hide in the cracks (although we did soak it in sani before using it)

4. I noticed a lot of foaming up in the carboy even though it had been still in one place with no yeast addition. This was the first time we used star san and we racked on top of foam.


Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[Undrtkr_00]

3 lb of yeast? You mean 3 lb of extract?

 

[Yooper]

uh oh, an awful smell sounds like it could be bad.

I guess I have to ask why you didn't add yeast to the fermenter? Wort is a sweet liquid and even though it's in a sanitized container, the idea is to add yeast ASAP so it can gain a foothold and outcompete any other microbes that may be around. Going without the yeast for 48 hours would allow any other microbes in in to take hold without any competition from the yeast.

Wort is pretty sugary, and even though you used a sanitized container I'd be very uncomfortable with leaving an unyeasted wort sitting around at room temperature. It'd be like leaving orange juice or milk out at room temperature, in my opinion. Even in a sanitized container, not a great idea!

The reason you can do it with wort is because you add yeast right away which starts to ferment and outcompetes other things that could work against you. If you're saving wort, it should be refrigerated right after the boil and not left at room temperature.

 

[gurrback]

Yeah, 3lb DME.

I personally thought leaving it without yeast wasn't a great idea. I must have misinterpreted some advice I received about it being "ok" to travel and not pitch.

Well, I've pitched some big starters and we will see what happens (what else could I do??). I guess they are likely garbage but I won't know for at least a few more weeks. Ouch.

Wow...might be dumping 13 gallons and a ton of money/sweat down the drain. Not a good feeling.

 

[Dilligans]

I have had that happen when I was brewing. Ended up having to dump it. .

 

[birvine]

That's crappy. But think how good the next batch will taste!

B

 

[bja]

A few things went wrong with this batch and we introduced a few new variables so this may be a complicated one.

Not complicated at all. The advice you recieved was that it would be fine to wait 1.5 hours before pitching yeast. No one said 48 hours would be OK.

I realize that life sometimes gets in the way, but why wouldn't you pitch the yeast before you transported it? Just curious.

 

[joelmole]

Sorry for your loss

I personally thought leaving it without yeast wasn't a great idea. I must have misinterpreted some advice I received about it being "ok" to travel and not pitch.

I just read your prior thread. Revvy, with over 30,000 posts, told you to pitch it right away before taking it home. Not sure why this advice was ignored. Regardless, you asked if it would be ok to travel for 1.5 hours before pitching, not if it would be ok to travel for 1.5 hours, then let it sit around for 48 hours before pitching. The problem had nothing to do with the car ride.

 

[Revvy]

Yeah, you had two answers in your ENTIRE thread, one from someone who "thought" it might be ok to move it, and my post that went into detail about why you should pitch yeast BEFORE transporting the beer, including;

It's safer to do it at that point, then any other part of the fermentation process. You'll get plenty of aeration, your yeast won't be harmed, it will get thoroughly mixed with the wort, the yeast has the best chance of taking hold before anything bad gets in, AND when fermentation happens it would clean up anything that might have happened during transit.

Sorry about it....But that's really the only answer there is as to what happened.

One of the issues folks don't realize is that a carboy or bucket is not an airtight enviroment. It's really not supposed to be, and an airlock, though very important is still only a delicate barrier between the beer/co2 cushion and the outside world. Sloshing the beer even with an airlock on opens up the beer to both oxygen and to the possibilities of nasties getting in (the airlock could even get dislogded) it's not the best way to do things, but adding the yeast ahead for the reasons mentioned, kinda hedges the bet.

And that's why I caution folks not to move it with an airlock once beer is in there....you have a greater risk of oxygen/oxygen getting in there during all that whipping up in transit.

But you really can't leave unpitched wort in a fermenter, no matter HOW sanitized for a few days without risking what happened to you.

The only ways to safely do that is to put it into a truly sealed environment, like a keg purged with co2 for instance or the way no chill brewers have been doing for decades in Australia, and 2 years ago in BYO magazine John Palmer introduced it to the American Brewing scene, along with BIAB (Brew in a bag.)

You merely dump your boiling wort right into it and seal it up hot....it will steralize the container and form a vacuum in the container, protecting it...Then you either stick it in a fridge or just leave it to cool down to pitching temps on it's own, then you either rack to another fermenter, or just pitch yeast inside and ferment right in the aquatainer.

The method is great for folks who don't want to use 5-20 gallons of water to chill their wort, or where the groundwater is warm and won't really chill the wort all that fast anyway.

Dumping and sealing while boiling hot protects the wort from infection and lengthens the safety window til you can pitch the yeast. Folks have left their wort sealed for a week before even pitching the yeast with no issues. But it needs to be done in a completly airtight environment where nothing can get in.

 

[gurrback]

Hey everyone, thanks for responding so quickly and with such great advice.

I am seeing now that this is 100% my fault. Some how, in the time of my original post asking about transportation and my brew session this past weekend, the comments and advice I received on here became seriously mixed up with other things I had read. To be honest I did think twice about letting it sit for 2 days, regardless of the sanitary conditions. My mistake was in not coming back here to check up on the thread and refresh my memory.

To answer the question of why I didn't just pitch the yeast to begin with, it's pretty simple. I was late picking up my ingredients and didn't have enough time to make any yeast starters. I have been really interested in improving aeration, creating good ferm temps and creating big, strong starters. So much so that in a weird, misconstrued and hurried state I neglected some really basic elements of the brewing process. I have gone back to read my original posts and it was a huge "DUH" moment for me.

The problem is certainly not the advice I receive around here, but rather my ability to follow directions and SLOW DOWN while I'm brewing. My friend is going to be ticked that I'll likely have to toss this brew.

Humph. It's on days like this I reconsider what the heck I'm doing.

 

[HexKrak]

I've pitched after 24 hours and came out with great beer. Good luck with your batch!

 

[gurrback]

.

 

[joelmole]

Just made my first starter ever today. Hope it turns out well. The difference is that I'm brewing in a couple of days

Seriously in your situation I would have just forgotten about the starter and pitched the single vial of yeast, or double pitched if you have a local home brew shop nearby to pick some more yeast up. Under pitching is probably better than letting unfermented wort sit around for 2 days.

Though I haven't done this yet, seems that home brewers that want to brew on a whim without the time needed to make a starter will keep some dry yeast in the fridge for just such an occasion, or just pony up the dough for double the amount of liquid yeast (though I know that's costly)

 

[gurrback]

So it's approx. 2 weeks later and I'm planning to open up the carboys to take a gravity reading tonight. I've stuck my nose by the airlock and it doesn't smell great, but it's significantly better than the first whif 2 weeks ago. I know that c02 is present and that it's impossible to judge by airlock smell, but it was mildly encouraging nonetheless. I'll take what ever I can get after this whole calamity!

The batches appeared to have a strong, regular fermentation that lasted for approx 10 days. I've examined the carboys and see noting unusual on the surface or floating around in the beer. I still anticipate having to dump this one but we will see this evening.

Now taking bets...