Noxious Gas/Odor from Carboy during Fermentation

Hey guys,

So this past Saturday I brewed an all Galaxy IPA and used WYEAST 1272 for the first time to switch it up. The fermentation took roughly 40 hours to start even with a healthy starter and a pitching temp of 68 degrees. The fermentation really took off around Tuesday morning and smelled/looked great. This morning I went down before work to take a temp reading and got a nasty noxious, odor smell that immediately gave me a headache. I let it sit and came back about 45 minutes ago after getting home. I took the air lock out of the carboy and was slammed with the same smell but way more intense this time, immediately making me lightheaded.

I have never experienced this in all my years of brewing, and cannot imagine its from the yeast as I have done research and seen no indication of this. The smell is almost like ammonia. I have a pretty solid background in biology and chemistry, but do not know where to start with this.

Anyone else every experience this? Basically getting the feeling I need to dump this batch pretty soon.

 

appears its caused by a vigorous fermentation with excessively high co2 concentrations. I’m gonna see it through, hopefully it calms down and the beer comes through as expected.

Thanks all.

 

The starter smelled perfectly fine - no off aromas. I do a great job of sanitizing everythig and have yet to have an infection in several years of brewing. However, there is Always a first time for everything so hopefully thats not the case.

 

Nope no link or data unfortunately. Someone in our HB club said they had experienced this before. High levels of CO2 built up and he almost knocked himself out smelling the carboy during peak fermentationZ

This is the first time I’m experiencing this and there doesn’t seem to be many resources/recounts of this happening widely. So all options/reasons are still on the table.

I will stay the course and will report back when I take my first gravity reading tonight. I will unfortunately have to make the decision on whether I think the beer will turn out or not - I don’t want to waste 6 oz Galaxy hops dry hopping an infected (using the term loosely) beer.

 

Oh and the beer smelled perfectly fine on both Tuesday and Wednesday but the fermentation was pretty slow. The odor arised yesterday when the fermentation seemed to peak.

 

Yep that sounds like a great plan.

Definitely not sulphur based. My sanitation procedures are consistent and well prepared. Ive never had an infection issue in well over 50 batches.

Will check when I get home and report back.

 

Great news! The beer is absolutely fine. I took a gravity reading and it was 1.015, which is damn close to my expected 1.014 and the fermentation is still going strong. I got absolutely no odor from the sample I pulled for the gravity reading. I tasted it and it was even more delicious than I had hoped. I decided to rack to secondary on top of the ounces of dry hops.

Bad news! I think the smell is coming from freon leaking in my chest freezer. I've read that while most freons are odorless, some can have an ether-like smell. That might explain why I almost passed out yesterday.

 

I usually dont check my beers everyday but I just got a new chest freezer which I converted into my fermentation chamber and have been closely monitoring the temperature since its a nee system