My beer smells like sulfur

[noblebrew]

I just started kegging my beer and so far all my batches (4 so far) have a sulfur smell to them. Two I primed with corn sugar. The other two I did a set it and forget it method. When I bottle I don't get this.

possible causes that I could think of.

I have started doing a 3 week primary. Am I leaving it on the yeast cake to long?

The kezzer is in the laundry room could the shaking from the washer be putting the yeast back into suspension?

I have noticed that after the first couple pints the sulfur smell goes away but then returns the next day.

What else would cause this?

Any suggestions on what to do to fix this?

 

[zachattack]

What were the 4 batches? Some yeast strains through out a lot more sulfur than others. I don't think it's related to the washer in any way.

Are you sure it's a sulphur flavor, not a plasticky flavor? Some people notice a plastic off flavor when they use standard vinyl beverage lines. You can switch to barrier tubing to avoid that.

 

[noblebrew]

on 3 of them I used a London yeast and the 4th was and American hefe yeast.
they were a banana bread ale, a red ale, a nut brown, and a raspbeery wheat. the sulfur was low in the wheat and I'm wondering if I'm not just imagining it.

 

[JonM]

Perfectly normal for a hefe yeast. Check this thread out.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/wyeast-3068-hefeweizen-sulfur-smell-220075/

In the meantime, maybe purge the keg a couple times over the course of a couple days. I bet the sulfur smell goes away in no time.

 

[ajdelange]

Sulfur smells are a normal component of 'jungbuket' with the intensity depending on the amount of sulfate in the water and the yeast strain, particularly the latter. The lager yeasts are infamous for this with the room in which the fermentation is taking place often becoming positively stinky. Jungbuket, as the name implies, will, under normal circumstances, dissipate by itself. With keg beer you can try raising the CO2 pressure high, letting the gas dissolve and then bleeding back to normal pressure. The idea is that the CO2 which escapes when the keg is bled will scrub out some of the volatile sulfur compounds.

Some beers have a definite sulfur note in their flavor profile - again, particularly the lagers.

Of course there are other things that can cause off odors such as infection. If it doesn't go away by itself after a couple weeks conditioning (longer for lager) other causes need to be investigated.

 

[Dingobitme]

I have a London yeast stout (WL013) that after 5 days smells like Lucifer's outhouse... I hope I have the same positive results after...

 

[SeeMont]

Thanks for this thread. Brewed a 5 gallon batch of IPA, S-05 yeast. The Ferm temp was about 4 degrees higher than I usually do, 68 degrees. Had the sulfur smell and first thought was to dump. Over the course of two days I burped off the gas from the keg, The smell was sulfur. The fourth day the beer was okay, Good luck.