Nasty poop smell before fermenting

[Warhound]

Hello all, newish here. Just finished mashing, smelled great. Fired up 40g water to 205f last night 5pm,killed all power and dumped 50 lbs corn in and passed out, 3 am got up, dumped 50 lbs barley In at 155f, brought temp down to 148f. Waited about 2 hours, Tossed cheap Amazon alpha (low temp) about 3 tbsp. Waited half hour and stirred, temp 139f. Waited another hour or so, stirred, 120f and tossed beta. Time is around 1pm. Smelled great like oatmeal porrage or something

Went to friends house , got back at 830pm, smells literally like dogshit. Transferred to brute cans inside, thought smell was on my head. Wife comes out to the garage asking if the dogs shit in the house. Pitched some red star yeast and fermax and closed the lids.

This is the second time a AG went weird on me. It was foaming as if it was already fermenting, both times. First time was sweet feed, and it went from SS pot to brute can directly at 130f. Went smelly before pitching temps.

Other stuff. It's a 65g wood barrel from Lowes. Mashed outside overnight. Cleaned all the nasty shit out of the barrel beforehand and took stainless scrubber with lye and scrubbed the wood nice and clean(I make soap so got lye and know how not to melt your skin off).

Sprayed out really well. Drilled out the bung 1" npt and added 220 4500 element. Sealed through friction alone.

Brought to boiling over 4 hours. Worked amazing, couldn't be more impressed that a 140 dollar setup was so painless compared to SS pot for twice price and third the size.. The lids warped to shit so need to figure something new out there.

Anyways, is it my enzymes smelling? I say not since my other sweet feed that did this was malt and different equipment used entirely.

If this is something I can search, please tell me the keywords cause dogshit ain't Poppin up. Can't find my brix
Refractometer so not gonna worry about SG, just trying my new barrel out to see if it worked.

Dog poop smell reminds me of fermenting grass, but I've never actually smelled that so not sure how it reminds me of that. There's a question here somewhere..... Again smelled amazing and tasted amazing before I left. In 6 hours it had a foam head on it and smelled like shit, like it was fermenting on its own.....

Wondering if the problem is overall time mashing, spent about 8 hours under 120f. Read somewhere here you want to get temps down to pitching faster than that

Thanks guys.

[NZChris]

I've had poo smell twice. One was the variety of corn and I could smell poo when I took the lid off the barrel I was storing it in. The other was rum when I used some expensive rum yeast I'd been given. Both turned out ok after a few year's aging, but they weren't great when fresh off the still. I marked them as 'not for blending' and kept them separate from everything else.

[NormandieStill]

If it's an infection then chilling with a wort chiller might be a good solution. My first bourbon mash did exactly the same thing on an overnight cool. I now force chill all mashes to let me pitch yeast before anything else takes over. The smell of cow crap (slightly sweet and grassy) might suggest some kind of fermentation and foam is a fairly good indicator of some kind of activity.

Would be very interested in some pictures of your barrel. I've been toying with the idea of a wooden barrel for large batch mashing but I never thought of directly firing it with an element. Don't think I'd want to tie up my element for the duration of the ferment though.

[Ben]

I would bet its butyric acid. You need to cool faster or boil to avoid it, optimum production is something around 105°f. Let the fermenter set longer than you normally would, the yeast will partly clean it up. Your low wines run may be unpleasant, but let the low wines age a bit and it will turn to pineapple (esterification). It's going to require more patience than normal, but can turn to something really great.

[Dancing4dan]

I have been interested in oak barrels as fermenters but never heard of using one for a mash tun.

Is this the first time you used the barrel or has it been been used to mash previous to this?

[Ben]

Lots of oak mash tuns prior to the industrial revolution. They are still common in monastic breweries through Europe, and some craft breweries are using them in the US. If you look at George Washington's distillery they are using them for re-creation.

[still_stirrin]

So, the wood will hold all kinds of “critters”, ie - yeast cells AND bacteria. If you’ve had bacterial contamination in a mash in a wooden tun, then EVERY subsequent mash will be inoculated with the bacteria, like it or not.

This “advantage” was exploited by old world (monasteries) brewers to develop and maintain their “signature” beers. But, if you’ve cultured a “poop” bacteria, then consider it your “trademark”. And it’s unlikely that scrubbing the vessel will eliminate the bacteria. Sorry to say it.

The thing of note here is really that your brewing processes are lax. The long lag between the mash steps has created an environment that propagates bad things in your beer. You need to improve your process as that is important to the brew even though you’re going to distill it later. If you put “crap” into the boiler, you’ll get “concentrated crap” out if it.
ss

[zapata]

I agree with the others, this is almost certainly an infection. It's also a fairly good description of what corn smells like if you let it naturally ferment. Try it if you've got some corn left, just soak some in a jar and see how it smells. Interestingly, if you let it get past the grassy vomit poo stage by day 2 or 3 then lactic bacteria will take over, and they smell good and tangy and they out compete and overpower the stinky stuff. Try it.

I mention it for 2 reasons. 1, aside from cooling faster to get through the danger zone and pitch faster, you didn't mention anything about pH. The magic of sour mash before the modern era was that it naturally combated nasty wild yeast and bacteria without needing much sophistication. In the modern era we can much more precisely adjust and measure pH and titrable acidity. Your enzymes will have optimal pH, but a final pH of 4.5-5 or below would probably drastically slow or eliminate your problem. And a unique and interesting way to lower your pH is with lactic soured grain as I mentioned above, it's pretty much like the German brewing ingredient of sauergut which they used when they weren't legally allowed to use acids to adjust pH. And from observing grain souring in a jar, I think the lactic acid bacteria actually eat the vomit shit smells directly. Meaning a live lactic infection may not just slow infections but actively counter them.

Personally, if I had a poopy smelling wash, I'd inoculate it with some lactic acid bacteria. Since you don't have any pre-soured jars of grain at the moment, I'd throw in some LAB probiotic tabs or some yogurt.

And if I had a wooden mash tun that had a poopy vomit infection, I'd ferment as much desirable microbes in it as possible, hoping that a good lactic culture will kill the stinky ones, acidify the wood to keep them dead, and maybe even eat the stink out of it too. All the wooden mash tuns and wash backs are pretty renowned for their unique bacterial populations, yours got off to a bad start but that doesn't mean it can't be turned around.

[Warhound]

I agree with the others, this is almost certainly an infection. It's also a fairly good description of what corn smells like if you let it naturally ferment. Try it if you've got some corn left, just soak some in a jar and see how it smells. Interestingly, if you let it get past the grassy vomit poo stage by day 2 or 3 then lactic bacteria will take over, and they smell good and tangy and they out compete and overpower the stinky stuff. Try it.

I mention it for 2 reasons. 1, aside from cooling faster to get through the danger zone and pitch faster, you didn't mention anything about pH. The magic of sour mash before the modern era was that it naturally combated nasty wild yeast and bacteria without needing much sophistication. In the modern era we can much more precisely adjust and measure pH and titrable acidity. Your enzymes will have optimal pH, but a final pH of 4.5-5 or below would probably drastically slow or eliminate your problem. And a unique and interesting way to lower your pH is with lactic soured grain as I mentioned above, it's pretty much like the German brewing ingredient of sauergut which they used when they weren't legally allowed to use acids to adjust pH. And from observing grain souring in a jar, I think the lactic acid bacteria actually eat the vomit shit smells directly. Meaning a live lactic infection may not just slow infections but actively counter them.

Personally, if I had a poopy smelling wash, I'd inoculate it with some lactic acid bacteria. Since you don't have any pre-soured jars of grain at the moment, I'd throw in some LAB probiotic tabs or some yogurt.

And if I had a wooden mash tun that had a poopy vomit infection, I'd ferment as much desirable microbes in it as possible, hoping that a good lactic culture will kill the stinky ones, acidify the wood to keep them dead, and maybe even eat the stink out of it too. All the wooden mash tuns and wash backs are pretty renowned for their unique bacterial populations, yours got off to a bad start but that doesn't mean it can't be turned around.

Do you have a post in mind for cultivating your own colony? And what are your thoughts on bought vs grown? Ill have to do some research cause this intrigues me. I'm not scared of bacteria, I welcome it. I'm not in this hobby to make the best stuff in the world, it's all just a giant science project to me.

But the poop smell is unwelcome.

[Warhound]

If it's an infection then chilling with a wort chiller might be a good solution. My first bourbon mash did exactly the same thing on an overnight cool. I now force chill all mashes to let me pitch yeast before anything else takes over. The smell of cow crap (slightly sweet and grassy) might suggest some kind of fermentation and foam is a fairly good indicator of some kind of activity.

Would be very interested in some pictures of your barrel. I've been toying with the idea of a wooden barrel for large batch mashing but I never thought of directly firing it with an element. Don't think I'd want to tie up my element for the duration of the ferment though.

Ill post some pics here but I'm considering starting a new thread so I can chronicle the ferments for anyone thinking of doing the same. I'm curious if the wood can continue to leach baddies after several boilings. Maybe it's a pipe dream, but 140$ 65g insulated rigid barrel with no temp sensitivity is unheard of, evidently the catch might be the bacteria in the wood.

Standby for some pics on this thread when I get home.

This was my first anything in the barrel

[Warhound]

So I drilled the bung out with a 1.5 holesaw. The wood broke at the very end, so pilot bit it all the way through, and drill the back about halfway and then drill the front. Use light pressure, especially if the wood has been soaking since it will be soft.

I then used the bung as a sort of bulkhead. It was so tight it had a drip but after heating the water the wood swelled around it and it stopped. Then again, a drip doesn't matter when you have 30g of water.

I ordered a 1" npt female X 1.5" pipe nipple. You can get a 10 pack for less than 30 bucks on Amazon. Screwed my element into it and slid the bung over that. Slid the assembly into the hole and lightly tapped the bung(wood) with a blunt yet thin piece of metal so really compress it around my pipe nipple.

The problem with this is the element is pretty high so you will have to stir it 3 or 4 times bringing it up to temp, but replacement bungs are 15$ for 10 so it's less nerve racking than drilling a stave.

Worked well, brought my water up to a boil in about 4 hours with a 4500w element. A 6500 is in the mail.

When you get the barrel, try like hell to get a whiskey barrel. My wine barrel had green dusty mold. It cleaned up easy enough with water and a scrubber. Just hit it with lye water to help burn anything else up. I suspect the whiskey barrel won't have as much of a problem.

After it cooled to pitching temp I took a 5g bucket and bailed it into 2 35g brute cans grain on. I find it so much easier to separate grain after ferm than before. I think what I'll do next time is bail the corn mash at 170f into my brute cans with the barley. That should bring the temp down for the plastic while still remaining hot enough to pasteurize any bugs from the wood.

I have no idea about the barrel, but I'm honestly surprised more people here aren't talking about them. I searched like a fool for a wood mashtun out of a barrel here and found very little. Seems like such a wasted opportunity, assuming the ferms turn out better than my poo smelling stuff I just got.

Another thought is just to boil water in it and use a mash pump to pump the hot water into brute cans if just mashing barley. The brute cans get real squishy with water hot enough for corn.

[Stonecutter]

Wooden washbacks are going to be very finicky for the exact reasons mentioned above…infection. There are distillers who swear by them. Some kind of steam protocol may help but as still_stirrin mentioned you don’t want your trademark to be shit.

https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/ask-t ... han-steel/

[zapata]

Do you have a post in mind for cultivating your own colony? And what are your thoughts on bought vs grown? Ill have to do some research cause this intrigues me. I'm not scared of bacteria, I welcome it. I'm not in this hobby to make the best stuff in the world, it's all just a giant science project to me.

I like the idea of sourcing microbes from the grain just because it seems cooler, less predictable, and potentially unique. I like the idea of using commercial cultures because they are proven, known, repeatable and don't have the gross microbes we know are also in grains. I've done both.

So far as specific posts, I don't remember if it was here or at artisan distillers I documented pre-souring corn to be used in UJSSM style ferment. I inoculated that with corn and kept it warm in a slow cooker. But most of the best threads I recall have come from a niche of homebrewers that are obsessed with low oxygen levels, often abbreviated to LODO. Anyway, you'll see some reference to that in these links, to avoid opening a complete new can of contentious worms, I'd ignore the LODO talk. But these two threads I had bookmarked and will give you an idea on getting started or maintaining.
https://www.themodernbrewhouse.com/a-sauergut-reactor/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/bi ... on.643554/
Milk the funk is one of the best sites talking about fermenting with anything other than normal yeast. Their lacto page is super:
http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Lactobacillus
And various sources, including grain:
http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Alterna ... ia_Sources
I've been planning on getting some varieties of lacto and doing heavy infections to see if different flavors will come through the still. Haven't gotten around to it yet, but milk has links to various suppliers.

All of that said, if I were in your shoes I would immediately check ph and adjust to under 4.5 with whatever acid you have on hand, preferably lactic. Then I'd pitch in some L. plantarum from a known culture source like probiotic tabs or GoodBelly probiotic drink. I suspect your pH has already dropped and enough alcohol has developed to check whatever was stinking but I'd get on top of it.

I seriously doubt you've ruined anything. The infection came from the grain. Which means it would be present to some degree in any unboiled wash. The key to preventing it will be faster cooling and adjusting the pH as soon as possible, so check your enzymes for ranges. Alpha is often in the 5.5 range, beta a bit lower, hit those targets, then drop to 4.5 ASAP. In the future it won't matter if the same infection comes from the source of grain, or the mash tun, or your still house. It was always gonna be present anyway. Just make it a hostile environment.

[Ben]

The infection came from the grain. Which means it would be present to some degree in any unboiled wash. The key to preventing it will be faster cooling

This.

I do all my brewing side in stainless but have learned that any recipe using a specific brand of crimped barley has to be boiled or rapid chilled, otherwise I get nasty butyric.

You can certainly kill whatever bacteria you have in that vessel, its got a heating element... fill with water, let soak a day or two and boil the hell out of it.

[Warhound]

The infection came from the grain. Which means it would be present to some degree in any unboiled wash. The key to preventing it will be faster cooling

This.

I do all my brewing side in stainless but have learned that any recipe using a specific brand of crimped barley has to be boiled or rapid chilled, otherwise I get nasty butyric.

You can certainly kill whatever bacteria you have in that vessel, its got a heating element... fill with water, let soak a day or two and boil the hell out of it.

Precisly what I did. Soaked for about a week to rehydrate barrel. Drained and sprayed, refilled, scrubbed with lye, drained and sprayed and finally mashed(hence this thread), soft boiled for about an hour before tossing my grain.

This isn't a failure, just an oddity. I will continue

[Warhound]

Do you have a post in mind for cultivating your own colony? And what are your thoughts on bought vs grown? Ill have to do some research cause this intrigues me. I'm not scared of bacteria, I welcome it. I'm not in this hobby to make the best stuff in the world, it's all just a giant science project to me.

I like the idea of sourcing microbes from the grain just because it seems cooler, less predictable, and potentially unique. I like the idea of using commercial cultures because they are proven, known, repeatable and don't have the gross microbes we know are also in grains. I've done both.

So far as specific posts, I don't remember if it was here or at artisan distillers I documented pre-souring corn to be used in UJSSM style ferment. I inoculated that with corn and kept it warm in a slow cooker. But most of the best threads I recall have come from a niche of homebrewers that are obsessed with low oxygen levels, often abbreviated to LODO. Anyway, you'll see some reference to that in these links, to avoid opening a complete new can of contentious worms, I'd ignore the LODO talk. But these two threads I had bookmarked and will give you an idea on getting started or maintaining.
https://www.themodernbrewhouse.com/a-sauergut-reactor/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/bi ... on.643554/
Milk the funk is one of the best sites talking about fermenting with anything other than normal yeast. Their lacto page is super:
http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Lactobacillus
And various sources, including grain:
http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Alterna ... ia_Sources
I've been planning on getting some varieties of lacto and doing heavy infections to see if different flavors will come through the still. Haven't gotten around to it yet, but milk has links to various suppliers.

All of that said, if I were in your shoes I would immediately check ph and adjust to under 4.5 with whatever acid you have on hand, preferably lactic. Then I'd pitch in some L. plantarum from a known culture source like probiotic tabs or GoodBelly probiotic drink. I suspect your pH has already dropped and enough alcohol has developed to check whatever was stinking but I'd get on top of it.

I seriously doubt you've ruined anything. The infection came from the grain. Which means it would be present to some degree in any unboiled wash. The key to preventing it will be faster cooling and adjusting the pH as soon as possible, so check your enzymes for ranges. Alpha is often in the 5.5 range, beta a bit lower, hit those targets, then drop to 4.5 ASAP. In the future it won't matter if the same infection comes from the source of grain, or the mash tun, or your still house. It was always gonna be present anyway. Just make it a hostile environment.

Amazing post. Ill be buying some repeatable bugs like you say and see what happens in a sort of sour mash situation. Meaning I'll use the same recipe for the mash and use some stillage for acid for PH, but not reuse the grain. Then use the same bacteria pills for several similar mashes in a row and see what happens.

I might do a few more of these what I dids for a baseline to see if harboring a specific germ is actually possible. See if I get dog poop several times in a row, switch to this proposed new method for several generations, then come back and do exactly what I just did and see what the change is.

Regardless this was nothing more than a proof of concept that I say went better than my own expectation. Other than the poop, which sounds like a technique issue rather than hardware

[zapata]

Great attitude, look forward to hearing how it all works out.

[Warhound]

Just an update I believe the smell has improved immensely from the yeast and is leaning much heavier twords a sweet throw up smell indicating something like butyric acid to be more of a possibility. Lifted a lid and has a solid cap on top. Didn't break it down.

[Ben]

Just an update I believe the smell has improved immensely from the yeast and is leaning much heavier twords a sweet throw up smell indicating something like butyric acid to be more of a possibility. Lifted a lid and has a solid cap on top. Didn't break it down.

Sounds like it might be time to get a long length of soft copper and build yourself and immersion chiller.