Belgian Abbey Ii And Sulfur

[Sammus]

Howdy. I'm making a Belgian Abbey II starter, well have been for a couple days, and it smells mildly of sulfur. My house is cold and the smack pack is ancient, so it took a couple days to grab.

I have googled and found on another forum people saying they get a tiny bit of sulfur with this yeast but it dissipates. Has anyone else experienced this?

The starter doesn't taste or smell bad at all, except for the extremely mild sulpher part, and I didn't give it time to see if it dissipates. There isn't really any of those typical belgian phenolics either though, but that was kind of expected, since it is advertised as low phenolic, and how much can it really make from 3L of 1.030 wort when it's designed for 1.100 beers right?

Cheers,

Sam

 

[Stuster]

Yeast will produce sulphur when under stress (poor dears ). You mention that your house is a bit cold. It may be a bit too cold for this yeast. What temp are they at? Is that within the range Wyeast suggest? The low pitch rate it sounds like you have and the age of the yeast would have also added to the potential stress on the yeast. It should be fine to go ahead and make beer with this yeast though. Might be worth turning on that heater though.

 

[Sammus]

Wyeast lists it as 18-24, and in my cellar it sits at a pretty constant 16C. And the pack was pitched before it swelled (time constraints). And it sat in sweet wort doing nothing visible for 2 days before I wrapped my heat belt around it and hooked it up to a controller set to 23C. Then it fermented out in about 12 hours Crash chilled for 2 days, syphoned off the stuff on top. Tasted it - wasn't bad, wasn't great, slightly sulphury. I've since boiled up another 3L of wort (a bit weak this time by accident, 1.030 instead of 1.040). Cooled and dumped it on the yeast, stirring at 20C this time. Took off like a rocket and has fermented out in 24hrs Got about an inch of yeasty goodness in the bottom of my flask now, ready for the 25L of 1.104 monster (R10 clone ) that will fed to it soon. I *think* the sulfur may have dissipated, though my smelling gland isn't acting at its full potential at present.

Overall I'm pretty confident it's OK, just curious if others have any had any sulfur with this. I didn't think about the yeast stress thing, I'd say that was most likely it.