Sulphur smelling sugar wash?

[HookLine]

About 4 days ago I decided to take advantage of the cool weather and try a 12% sugar wash using Triple Distilled turbo (with carbon) for the first time. 10 hours after pitching the yeast (and carbon) there was still not a bubble in sight, so threw in 100 g of bakers yeast and within about 4 hours it was bubbling merrily away. But it has a strong sulphur smell I have never got with other sugar washes. Besides using the Triple Distilled turbo, the only other thing that is different from my usual sugar washes is that I am using a stainless keg for the fermenter, instead of the plastic ferment barrel. (I cleaned and sanitised the keg real well first.)

Any ideas why the sulphur smell?

Will it get cleaned up during distillation by the copper mesh? Or should I ditch it and start again?

Thanks for any advice.

[pintoshine]

http://www.sdaws.org/Articles/Article4.htm
This article discusses rotten egg smelling grape wine and some possible solutions.

[HookLine]

Much obliged to you, Pintoshine.

[defcon4]

I know that smell very well as a former winemaker. Yeast will produce sulphur dioxide (rotten egg smell) when it does not have enough nitrogen. I'm sure the article pintoshine posted has all this in there but from my experience, go ahead and add some diamonium phospate or yeast ENERGIZER (NOT just nutrient). The smell should go away in about a day if you add enough and the yeast should naturally clean up the wash, you'll just have to let it set a little longer after the primary ferment is complete.

[HookLine]

And much obliged to you too, defcon4.

What you say agrees with the article Pintoshine linked to. (Excellent article, highly recommend it to all.)

Unfortunately, being Saturday afternoon, the local brewing suppliers are closed for the weekend, so I have just added some tomato paste, and will see how that goes.

Cheers

[junkyard dawg]

If you pitched a turbo yeast in the right proportions of sugar then I doubt lack of nitrogen is the problem. The turbo should contain all that. I thought it was hydrogen sulfide that smelled like rotten eggs? sulpher dioxide stinks, but not like rotten eggs... as a wine maker, doesn't that come from campden? not undernourished yeast? 12% is no problem for a turbo yeast, if you measured things right, then it isn't coming from undernourished yeast. Could just be the general stinky nature of turbo yeasts...

[junkyard dawg]

that is a good article...

[brian]

g'day hookline

apart from what junkyard said i believe the 10 hr lag phase has caused you some grief -- bloody hell ,, turbo , as much as i despise it ,,should have kicked in within an hour or two if your start temp was 30+

was a bit worried too about your comment "took advantage of cold weather"

a king sized bug is in there from either the air or the equipment

suggest you run it SLOWLY and TWICE ,,,,,,,,,,this should straighten out your misery

the obnoxius bits will surely vent off

trust me i'm very old and very bald

doctors bury their mistakes , we distil ours

many regards brian

[HookLine]

Thanks for comments JD and Brian.

When I said I took advantage of the cold weather, I should have also mentioned that I am in the tropics and it is actually 'cool' weather not cold, with air temps inside the house of high teens-mid 20s. Just right for a Triple Distilled turbo. Tasmania this ain't, Brian. This is actually the best time of year to ferment up here. It is trying to ferment during summer that is the bitch for us. Daytime temps well over 30, and high humidity.

Ferment start temp was 28 degrees.

The smell is not real horrible like rotten eggs, but it is very noticeable and can be smelt through the house. I have run several 'Heat Tolerant' turbos and haven't had any problems, certainly no smell of sulphur at all. They also kicked in within an hour or so. So I am pretty sure it isn't the air, or my basic procedure. Though it is always possible I could have messed up something on this ferment, or that was something to do with my new fermenter (the keg, though I can't see why, it is stainless and I cleaned it damn well).

Yeah, I know, turbos are looked down on, but I am fairly new to stillin and so ran turbos for the first few ferments just to make it easy. The Triple Distilled was just an experiment to see how well the carbon worked.

I am currently running two ferments, the Triple Distilled, and my first straight bakers yeast, which is doing fine so far, though it runs a lot slower than turbos. If the bakers yeast turns out fine I will be swapping to it permanently. (I tasted the bakers yeast ferment the other day, and it is quite nice as is.)

I can't be certain it was just adding the tomato paste, but 24 hours after I threw it in the sulphur smell is almost completely gone and the ferment is still bubbling away nicely.

You are right, JD, that the turbo pack should contain enough nutrients. But the lack of ANY activity from the turbo yeast, plus the sulphur smell, the added bakers yeast kicking the ferment off, and the good effect of the tomato paste, all says to me that I got a dud pack of turbo, for both the yeast and the nutrients. I presume turbos use DAP as the main nutrient, and I know from using fertilisers on my fruit trees over many years that ammonium based ferts can easily lose their effectiveness if not stored properly, as the ammonium breaks down very quickly in the presence of air and moisture. That is one big advantage of using nitrate forms of nitrogen in ferts, instead of ammonium forms. So maybe there was a tiny hole in the turbo pack that killed off the yeast and released the ammonium.

Anyways, it looks like the problem is solved, and hopefully running it through the copper mesh packing will clean up any little bits left over.

Thanks to everyone for their help. I'll let you know how the final product turns out.

[CoopsOz]

I know this has been sorted, I just wanted to share a passage I found whilst surfing. I know autolysis is well known around the forum, it's just that the guy describes the smell exactly as you describe it. Worth a thought.

After the initial burst of fermenting, some yeast will fall out of solution and form a thick layer on the bottom of the fermentation vessel. If the must is left on top of this, a process called autolysis may set in. When yeast begins to have to compete for sugars more, sometimes they'll turn to dead yeast for food, which produces a sulphury smell like rotten eggs. To avoid this, it is desirable to siphon off the liquid, leaving the sludge behind. This is known as racking. The first racking is the most important, though you should rack whenever a fairly thick layer accumulates (though not more often than once every couple weeks, or you'll lose too much liquid). You can add more juice or honey or sugar when you rack to revive the fermentation if you like, but toward the end you probably shouldn't if you want it to clear more quickly.

[Uncle Jesse]

In my experience if you don't keep things clean enough or if you open up your fermenter too often you can contaminate your batch and get that sulphur smell.

Personally I don't use any fancy tricks to try to get rid of it. If my fermentation has off odors like that or if it starts to develop that white film on top, I toss the beer out and start new.

[stoker]

that white thing is a known infection, there's not much to do about it.

[HookLine]

Update.

The ferment finished okay. I did a low wines run and sat it on sodium carbonate for a few days, then did the second run yesterday, and it came out fine.

Actually, it is the cleanest tasting distillate I have got so far, no funkiness at all. Maybe that was due to the carbon that was in the ferment (which was a real bitch to filter out). Or maybe it was the carbonate (this was the first time I used it, previously used bicarbonate). Or maybe both. Whatever, it worked.

So many thanks for the good advice, folks.

Cheers.