You may have had residual sulfites remaining in your wort. I understand that yeast can react with the sulfite and cause excessive Sulphur in the finished beer. I’ve read that some yeast varieties are more prone to create Sulphur than others. Extra aeration before pitching the yeast can “use up” the residual sulfites. Did you notice a difference in lag time or overall attenuation? The presence of KMB or SMB can affect the performance of the yeast.
I agree. I noticed no difference in yeast performance.
A side note about Copper (Cu) sharing from personal experience.
Lower PH acidic water leeches more Cu into
water through copper pipes.
Once I raised my well water’s PH to 6.8,
the Cu levels dropped.
https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_Report.cfm?Lab=NRMRL&dirEntryID=80904
That’s what I’m hoping for: the pH of the beer will cause the copper in the penny to leach into the beer, bind with the sulfur, and it will fall out.
The good news is I believe it’s beginning to work. The smell and taste is not near as strong as it was when I first reported my issue. …and I tasted the beer lagering behind it which does not have the sulfur flaw.
At any rate, I am renaming this sulfur bomb from Citranot to Copper Penny. [emoji23]
In another post, I mentioned watching a Charlie Bamforth interview on beer flavor quality and stability. He described a brewery employee cleaning up sulfate in a batch of beer with copper. The employee walked into the QC lab with a glass of blue liquid. Basically, he overdoses the batch at XXX times the normal dose. He had to have his stomach pumped because he said he drank a pint of it. [emoji2357]
I use a small piece of copper pipe as suggested by mabrungard.
It’s placed in my boil kettle’s hop spider with every batch as insurance.
Copper pipe is 99.9% copper. I plan on trying to use a piece of copper pipe
to weigh down the hop bag.
I wouldn’t intentionally introduce copper if I didn’t have a problem. Like iron, copper can cause other problems with beer so should not be in the brew house. …but I was at zero so had nothing to loose.
I do use a copper immersion chiller. I bought it long before I knew about the detrimental effects of cooper in the brew house. So I live with it and I use Brewtan B in an effort to reduce its effect.
My thoughts are that the introduction of Cu from a 2" piece of copper is
negligible, and far from the impact of a copper kettle.