Noob Question

[beerjunky828]

I made a batch of brown ale using an English Style Ale YEast. White Labs. I let it ferment 18 days. At day 10 I took a gravity reading and it was almost done fermenting. it smelled great. Now at bottling, I just took a whiff and it smells a little like sulfur. I haven't tasted it yet and I don't have any weird floating trub or off looking material in the beer. What to do? I am about to taste it.

Edit. So i tasted it and it didn't have an off flavor. It just smells like rotten eggs.

 

[Parker36]

Don't worry about weird smells. It will be fine. You fermentation time is a little short, though. Just double check that you have hit your FG and it is steady.

 

[beerjunky828]

So what causes the SO2 smell? The beer tasted fine and we went ahead and bottled. Thanks for the quick response. Will the beer smell farty when we open the bottles??

thanks

 

[Homercidal]

Some beers do smell like farts at some stage in the fermentation. It will either pass some time in the fermenter, or in the bottle as the yeast continue to do their thing.

If you really want some fart odor, try making some Apfelwein!

 

[GuitarBob]

I had a similar problem with a stout that I made in January. I left it in primary for 3 weeks, and it tasted it great before I bottled it. After 2 weeks in the bottles it developed this rancid disgusting taste that only seemed to get worse each day.

Naturally I paniced and assumed that I didn't wash the bottles well enough, and got a nasty infection. Fortuantly I didn't have anything else to brew with, and so had no reason to dump the bottles. I left them alone for a few weeks then tried one and it tasted like a completely different beer, there was no trace of that rancid flavor or smell at all.

I now realize that not all green flavors taste the same, some taste like green apples and others taste like rancid garbage. Perhaps a more experianced brewer could explain why.