Fart Smell

[MadHatter]

I've had the same issue with the same beer for as long as I've brewed it on this system, an issue I never got at home, and that has never manifested itself in any of my other beers.

The beer has a strong fart smell for the first few minutes in the glass, which completely dissipates within a few minutes.

Using US-05 dry-pitched directly into wort around 21C, fermenting between 21 and 24C.

Ferm schedule is 16 days in primary with no skimming, aside from right before it goes into the bright tank. Condition in bright for 5 days.

Any ideas?

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[DageraadBen]

That's definitely H2S - hydrogen sulphide. Most people call it a rotten egg smell. It's very volatile, so yes, it'll blow off a little while after you pour it.

It's more of a problem with some yeasts than others. I'm not too well versed on the co-factors in fermentation that cause it to happen, but I have been told by at least two brewers is the way to get rid of it is to run the beer through copper.

One brewer I know had an H2S problem in a keg they were serving at a festival, so she added a copper fitting to the line to their tap and it fixed the problem completely. Another brewer told me that every time he transfers a beer he puts a sanitized copper scrubby into the hose, just to make sure H2S won't ever be an issue.

[dirtfish]

"wort in contact with copper during any prefermentation stages"

Would a copper sparge arm and copper mash tun manifold qualify?-or would the contact with copper need to be during/post boil?

Thanks!

[wailingguitar]

As a stop gap until you get the source problem solved, if you trickle CO2 through the carb stone with the tank vented you can scrub that character out of the beer in a fairly short time.

[TGTimm]

"wort in contact with copper during any prefermentation stages"

Would a copper sparge arm and copper mash tun manifold qualify?-or would the contact with copper need to be during/post boil?

Thanks!

Yes.

What? A ten-character minimum? So much for my terse reply.

[brewmaster 2011]

If your brewery apparatus does not have wort in contact with copper during any prefermentation stages, the advice to include some copper into the process is sound. A piece of copper tubing in the kettle or a copper scrubby could be sufficient. Copper ions are typically fully removed by yeast during fermentation, so they are not a concern in the beer. Copper reacts instantly with sulfurous compounds and precipitates them.

This is exaclty what I do. I have a copper tube that it is used for volume checks. It stays in the kettle during runoff and boil and haven't had a issue with sulfur in my beers.

[MadHatter]

Thank you all for the great responses, I would have never thought of adding copper as a solution. I do have copper in my test system but none in my big system so that could be the issue. Is H2S more prevalent with the use of certain malts?

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[brewmaster 2011]

Thank you all for the great responses, I would have never thought of adding copper as a solution. I do have copper in my test system but none in my big system so that could be the issue. Is H2S more prevalent with the use of certain malts?

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Most pilsner malts will have a significant amount of sulfur in them.

[MadHatter]

Most pilsner malts will have a significant amount of sulfur in them.

This is my only recipe that is predominantly Vienna which I assume is the pilsner strain based on country of origin, could that be the culprit?

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[brewmaster 2011]

It could be the yeast strain and also how violent the fermentation is to blow out the sulfur.

[soia1138]

I have never picked up any sulfur from US-05 and we use it a lot, also in conjunction with pilsner malt the majority of the time. Never have had copper in the process, so this issue is puzzling to me. I can offer an additional thing to try that has worked for us on a belgian strain that tends to generate some of that compound. We now ferment without a blowoff on that beer and the sulfur is all but gone. Even a 1 inch blowoff into a bucket still creates enough back pressure to keep it in the beer. Very small amounts can be scrubbed with the co2 stone as mentioned earlier.

[Fausto Yu-Shan]

Pectinatus spp.

Just in case check all your pipelines or hoses and equipment for spoilage organisms such as Pectinatus spp. which is a H2S producer (Rotten egg aroma) and make a thorough cleaning of it to prevent a possible cause.

As a reference you may consult the following links:

http://aem.asm.org/content/41/2/386.full.pdf

http://www.asbcnet.org/publications/journal/vol/abstracts/ASBCJ-2014-0610-02.htm

[AnthonyB]

In our experience US05 drops sulfur in a few circumstances; too high temp, too low pitching rate and temp drop before terminal gravity. 65f-70f is the sweet spot for us at 7 bbl, bigger volumes might be able to go warmer without detrimental affects.

[Gbbc]

I've had the same issue with the same beer for as long as I've brewed it on this system, an issue I never got at home, and that has never manifested itself in any of my other beers.

The beer has a strong fart smell for the first few minutes in the glass, which completely dissipates within a few minutes.

Using US-05 dry-pitched directly into wort around 21C, fermenting between 21 and 24C.

Ferm schedule is 16 days in primary with no skimming, aside from right before it goes into the bright tank. Condition in bright for 5 days.

Any ideas?

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Could you give us your pitching rate and a little more on the beer itself? OG, FG etc. Does the 16 days in the FV include days cold crashed? We use allot of US-05. With one of our beers we accidently forgot to set the FV temp and found it by the end of the weekend to be at 29 degrees C! No H2S though, just a little fruitier. We have had some mercaptan issues with a beer and found that by dropping some trub and yeast during the primary stage helped with this. I have found some autolysis aromas can come across as very sulphury.

[MadHatter]

Could you give us your pitching rate and a little more on the beer itself? OG, FG etc. Does the 16 days in the FV include days cold crashed? We use allot of US-05. With one of our beers we accidently forgot to set the FV temp and found it by the end of the weekend to be at 29 degrees C! No H2S though, just a little fruitier. We have had some mercaptan issues with a beer and found that by dropping some trub and yeast during the primary stage helped with this. I have found some autolysis aromas can come across as very sulphury.

We use US-05 in all of our beers for now, and yes when fermented hot it does get fruity / solventy in some cases, but this recipe in particular gets farty. I'll look into the possibility of mercaptan as well. OG is 1.043, FG aims for 1.010. Pitching rate is 300g dry into 450L, and we do not cold crash in primary. Generally the only dump I do is right prior to transferring from primary into bright tank at the 16 day mark.

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