Tastes good, smells like crap...Thoughts?

[tschafer]

Never had this happen before.

Racked a american brown ale out the the primary (7days) to secondary yesterday.

Took hydro reading. Target OG:1.016; hit 1.014. Awesome.

Tasted the hydro: Taste good, felt like it was on the right track.

But it smell like crap though.

So my question is: WTF?

Below is the recipe. Thoughts? I'm a bit worried. This is my 3rd attempt, all different recipes, to make a great brown ale and I really don't want to strike out with this style.

Base Water used.
Sulfate - 125
Calcium - 78
Magnesium - 21
Sodium - 119
Chloride - 170
pH - 7.51
Total Hardness - 204
Calcium Hardness - 180
Alkalinity - 131

Recipe:

15.37 g Epsom Salt (MgSO4)
4.31 g Chalk
1.07 g Gypsum

8 lbs 4.0 oz Pale Malt, Maris Otter
1 lbs 8.0 oz Victory Malt
12.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L
12.0 oz Chocolate Malt

2.0 oz Corn Sugar

1.00 Whirlfloc Tablet

6.0 oz Cascade (total)

1 pkgs California Ale V

 

[reed1911]

What did it smell like? Often yeast gives off gases that indeed smell bad, but the flavor is not the same as the smell. All my lambics and flanders brews smell horrible at one phase or another, sometimes just sulfer, sometimes smelly feet, sometimes like roadkill, time will get rid of that.

 

[cheezydemon3]

If it literally smelled like your feces then you are fukked. Dump it.

On the other hand if it was more of rotting eggs, then it will be FINE, and be a little more specific next time.

 

[biertourist]

Process information will probably be more useful than your recipe for troubleshooting this one...


Can you describe the smells that you're talking about, or do you mean that it LITERALLY smells like crap? (literal crap smells would be enterobacteria in which case you should not drink any more of the beer)


-I'm guessing that it smells sulfury (match heads, farts, or cooking cabbage?), in which case it seems that the California Ale V strains is one of the odd ale strains that can produce sulfurous compounds in a high enough concentration that you can smell them. (There are other reports of sulfur from this strain out there.)

Lager brewers are pretty much all used to sulfur smells evolving from the fermenter although it is more rare with ale strains. You have also added quite a bit of sulfur-related salts (Epsom and Gypsum both contain sulfur) and the combo of the high sulfur salt additions and a sulfur-prone yeast strain are probably to blame if you're getting sulfur smells.

Don't worry normally sulfur evolves off towards the end of fermentation and after a week or two of conditioning; if you keg you can also push some CO2 through it after you transfer it to keg. Definitely leave this beer on the yeast until the sulfur levels die WAY down.

Again, if you're getting stinky diaper smells you have a serious problem and should probably dump the batch and sanitize the crap out of everything (pun intended). -People will tell you that nothing that can hurt you can "live" in beer because of the hops and alcohol but enterobacteria can produce toxins that remain long after the alcohol has killed the bacteria. (I highly doubt you're dealing with entero bacteria but until you provide more information on the smell, it's hard to say.


Adam

 

[tschafer]

My bad.

The word crap really didn't help here did it.

It was old, waxy, stale chocolate notes, possible sulfur, but i don't.

Ugh, wish I wrote down what it smelt like at the time of the reading.

It was just not what it tasted like.

Possibly the yeast strain, Possible water treatment.

Not sure if the amount of epsom salt or calcium chloride that was added.

Thanks for the replies y'all.

 

[cheezydemon3]

If it tastes fine, it will smell fine in good time. Chocolate malt smells like ASS (much as you described) when fermenting IMHO, but ends up tasting fine (not exactly "Chocolate" but OK)