It smells like a skunk died in here

[doughaas]

That's what SWMBO said when I was racking my most recent brew.

I brewed a czechish pilsner about 3 weeks ago and pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The recipe is as follows.

10 lbs European pilsener malt
1.5 oz saaz at 60 minutes
0.75 oz saaz at 20 minutes
0.75 oz saaz at 1 minutes

grain was ground using a new corona style mill rather than lhbs mill for the first time.

Decoction mashed for the first time. Had 3 rests -
95f, 130ish and 150ish with a mashout. Don't remember the exact temps and
I mostly missed them anyway.

Hit my desired preboil sg by some miracle.

Boiled for 60 minutes on a gas stove with a 1500kw heatstick assisting (first time)

boiled off more than I expected and had to top up wiht about a gallon of water halfway through the boil.

At the end of the boil I found out that the hose for the chiller was frozen so into a full bathtub went the full kettle. I then fell asleep so I have no idea how long it took to cool. I woke up3 hours later and it was 60ish.

I had somehow forgotten to buy appropriate yeast and the lhbs was
closed so I pitched 4 mason jars of washed white labs
California lager yeast.

There was no activity at 52f for the first three days so I moved it to 64f. This produced lots of activity within 12 hours so I cooled it back down to 52 and let it blow off for a couple of days. On day 3 of active fermentation I was scheduled to go out of town for two weeks. Activity seemed to have subsided so I slapped a starsan filled airlock on the ale pail and left.

When I got back I found that gunk had bubbled out of the airlock and all over the place. By some miracle the beer did not appear grossly infected.

Yesterday I racked the beer into a carboy after 3 weeks in primary followed by a 2 day diacetyl rest on the cake at 64f. It smelled like skunk, worse than the worst heineken with maybe a touch of rotten eggs.

There is no way it is lightstruck at this point. Is this just sulfury lager yeast? I thought Cali common yeast wasn't supposed to be so sulfury and the last beer I made with it didn't have this smell. Could it be because I've actually fermented at lager temps this time instead of low 60s? Could his be dms from my short boil and slowly cooled all pilsener beer? It's lagering in the high 30s now, will this get better?

Longwinded I know but I had high hopes for this one and it's turned into a comedy of errors. I know I did a lot of things wrong but thats nothing new and
I've never had a beer smell like his before.

 

[Windigstadt]

Halfway through your post my two thoughts were sulfur from the cool fermentation and DMS from the short boil, so here's at least one vote for your theory. The good news is that I would expect the sulfur to clean up somewhat (though I'm a little concerned that it didn't clean up more during primary). The bad news is that the DMS is here to stay.

 

[Revvy]

Well that's the point of the next phase of the journey, the lagering phase.

Lager yeast stinks, and the main purpose of the several months in the cold and dark is to clear that out of there.

 

[sp1365]

When I made my Cali Common with the same yeast it smelled like death. After if fermented and went to secondary it smelled great. Give it time, as Revvy said, lager yeast stinks.