Back on board with a Robust Porter, & first time using John Palmer's water calculation sheets

Yesterday was a bit of a test run to see if I was ready to brew, after improving somewhat from my back injury. Luckily, a friend of my girlfriend recommended a chiropractic college that sees patients for cheap (I'm not insured currently since I'm not working). It turns out they are having a canned food drive, so I've been charged 3 cans of food per visit for back adjustments and some sort of ultrasound on my lower back muscles, which has really helped. I'm still not 100%, but I'm back up and brewing!

I have finally made my first true attempt at using John Palmer's water chemistry spreadsheet for brewing water. My goals for this beer were to:

• Balance the mash pH by adjusting for the proper Residual Alkalinity
• Achieve 50+ ppm calcium in the full wort for yeast health & beer clarity
• Adjust the chloride to sulfate ratio heavier to the chloride side to improve maltiness

I did this by adjusting only the mash water, and not adding any minerals to the sparge water or the boil. Portland mineral levels are all in the single digits, and can almost be considered nil. So my total mineral additions in the mash water came out to be:

• 3 gr. Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate)
• 5 gr. Calcium Chloride
• 9 gr. Baking Soda (seems like a lot, but that's what the spreadsheet said I would need to acheive an RA of 300+, to make sure the dark malts did not over-acidify the mash)

As far as I can tell, I did this right, but the other way to do it would be to shoot for a London water profile (where porters originated) on the entire brewing water. Either way, I think it's important to have enough minerals in the water to buffer the acids from the dark grains. I have been tasting a lot of porters & stouts in Portland, and although I really don't know which breweries are adjusting their water and which are not, it seems that I run into a lot of good dark beers that have a bit too sharp of a roasty bite. This could be from not adjusting the brewing water and getting a low pH in the mash. If done properly, the water adjustments should allow for a smoother and more nuanced roasty beer.

Unfortunately I was not able to get a good pH reading. I'm still meaning to take my ColorpHast strips in to Upright to test them against the digital pH meter. It's well-documented that these expensive strips can be off by as much as .3 pH, so I need to find out exactly how much mine are off to make them worth using. Or better yet, ask for a pH meter for Christmas!

Before I go to the recipe, I wanted to mention the OBC Fall Classic homebrew competition which took this past Saturday. It was a fun day, I judged IPA's in the morning, and American Ales in the afternoon (our flight was all pale ales). I also entered 3 beers: the Belgian Dark Strong, the Flanders red, and the fresh-hopped black saison. I was not expecting the black saison to do well, but out of all 3 beers, it was the only one to win a medal, taking first in Belgian & French ales! That is the first time I have placed first in that category, and it was a pretty big flight with 21 beers.

On to the beer recipe:

Back-cracker Porter

Recipe is for 7.2 gallons pre-boil, 6 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.062 IBU's 43

9.5 lb. Glen Eagle Marris Otter malt

.5 lb. Munich malt

.5 lb. Briess Special Roast

.5 lb crystal 40

.5 lb. chocolate malt

.5 lb. black patent

.25 lb. Special B

30 gr. Chinook whole 10% AA 60 min

28 gr. American Goldings whole 4% 15 min

28 gr. American Goldings whole 4% 0 min

Mash: 4.25 gallons, mash in to 149 for 60 minutes

(Mineral additions noted above)

Sparge with 5 gallons

Collect 7.2 gallons at 1.052 = 83% efficiency

Boil 60 minutes (I collected a little too much wort, so I used a slightly harder boil to get down to 6 gallons in 60 minutes)

Whirlfloc & Wyeast nutrient at 10 minutes

Chilled to 66, collected 5.25 gallons

Oxygen for 60 seconds

Pitched Wyeast 1056: about 1/2 cups thick yeast slurry from last batch

Fermenting at 68 degrees

Tasting of 3 recent beers

Ah man, this week sucks hard. I was sitting down starting to grind up grains for an IPA yesterday with some Newport hops I picked up from Upright, when I reached over a little too far and somehow threw lower back into a spasm. It hurt, but I thought if I took it fairly easy through the brewday, it would probably loosen up eventually. Sometime during the runoff, it seemed to spasm even harder and I was in a world of pain. So I had to totally cancel the brewday and luckily I wasn't halfway through the boil, when I would have wasted hops too.

Today I'm just sitting around the house, laying on a heating pad, tranqued up on advil, codeine, and reading For Whom the Bell Tolls. This sucks because I was supposed to help Upright with 2 brewdays and help another brewery do a bottling run on Friday, all of which I will probably have to miss. I'm currently consoling myself with a Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale (I have a soft spot for traditional pumpkin ales around this time of year) and an episode of Brew Strong. I thought, what better way to do a little beer tasting since I could use the muscle relaxing properties, and apparently I won't be brewing this week. Wah, Wah...

Starting light to dark:

All Brett Wheat Session Ale: Fruity, clean aroma, mainly of apple & pear, light hoppy spicyness, pils malt background. Light vanilla sweetness, light phenols. No classic brett or barnyard. Blonde and appealing color with a big head, which slowly recedes to patchy islands of foam. Great lacing. Flavor is somewhat phenolic with a touch or horse hair & earthy/smoky nuances. Very clean, drinkable beer with a light sweetness. Bitterness is low but balanced. Medium body, medium-high carbonation. Finishes somewhat tart, but just a twang, in no way a sour beer. Very easy to drink in volume. Overall: A good session ale but nowhere near as much brettanomyces character as I had hoped. No evidence of further fermentation in the keg, so I don't think it's worth aging, but it's probable that it would have picked up an more classic brett character with time. It was the crowd favorite at Clarissa's birthday party.

Clarissa's Sweat Meat Saison: Hints of fruit in the aroma with some higher alcohols. A dry graininess that is a little carboardy. Very hard to describe, but not very inviting. Nice orange color and nice head, no problems there. Flavor is fairly sweet up front, even though this beer finished very dry. Again, a dry grainy quality and more alcohol than I would like, but not terrible. Mouthfeel is fairly dry, but with good effervescence. Overall: Not my favorite beer. It seems to have a variety of strange flavors that do not mesh well, at least yet. The fact that it dried out so much puts all the flavors out in the open with no body or sweetness to bring them together. This is, however, the first saison I have spiced that did not come out over-spiced! Sorry Clarissa, I will try to make you a better birthday beer next year!

Fresh-hopped Black Saison: Aroma is somewhat hop-resinous, with a big rose note & perfumeyness. Dark malts are mainly in the background with no roastiness noted. Noticeable alcohol presence but pretty light for an 8% beer. Appearance is a very clear dark brown, almost black with cherry highlights, what you would expect from a dark schwazbier or a robust porter, with a big head which fades to an even 1/4 inch. Flavor is of hops up front, but fairly balanced with sweet malts. Light caramel/molasses, not prominent. Bitterness I would guestimate at 45 IBU's. Finishes a little bitter but overall very balanced. Perception of medium body even though it dried out to 1.007. Overall, I really like this beer, but it is something I would drink a goblet of and probably switch to something else after that. It turned out much more balanced than I expected, much of which is probably due to the hops that we had on hand (I designed the recipe around big citrusy American hops, and we received a lot Willamette, a much more subtle hop). This was the crowd 2nd favorite at the party.

Overall, I think these beers turned out pretty well. I went in knowing that they would be experimental, and with experiments you always get some surprises, some happy, some a let down. I might try to bottle off some of the brett beer and the fresh-hopped saison, to see what they do over the next 6 months.

Oh yeah, and the Belgian Dark Strong I did recently took 3rd in the Roots Competition (I'm not sure out of how many beers). Not bad for a 20 day old beer at 10.8%!

Svenska Köttbullar Säsong, Meetification part 2, and a new video.

The Beerquest Pilot Video that we helped out in finally came out. Check it out! It features Sixpoint, Brooklyn Brewery, and Kelso/Greenpoint Beer Works. And...us! Enjoy. Damn, I miss my brewing brothers back in Brooklyn. I hope you guys are doing well & brewing strong.

One note on our vignette, they actually asked us to make fun of Steve and be a little standoff-ish at first, so if I seem like a jerk, it's not my fault (for once!) I'm also in the background of the Sixpoint shoot cleaning kegs.

A week ago I did a 10 gallon batch of saison with my friend Josh. This is a really straightforward saison, where I was attempting to resolve some of the problems with my first Portland brew. I wanted to remove any chloramines from the water (using campden tablets), leave out the carafa which seemed to leave an ashy taste even at 1 oz., and pitch the yeast at a more ideal 68-70 degrees, followed by a ramp up to 80 degrees. We are thinking about dry hopping one of the carboys for experimentation.

I ran out of German pilsner malt, so we switched to Great Western "superior pilsner" malt. We noticed some HUGE protein chunks floating up in the boil, which were about the size of IKEA meatballs or even bigger. They looked kind of like this:

But with a gravy on them:

That's why we named this beer Svenska Köttbullar Säsong, which translates to "Swedish Meatball Saison". I'm still not sure what to think about this North American Pilsner malt, or if I would use it in lager.

Recipe is for 13.75 gallons pre-boil, 12.3 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.059 IBU's 29 F.G. 1.003 ABV 7.5%

16 lb. Great Western Superior Pilsner malt

4 lb. Vienna malt

2 lb. flaked triticale

8 oz. aromatic malt

9 gr. Willamette whole 4.7% 60 min

30 gr. East Kent Goldings pellets 4.8% 60 min

14 gr. Magnum pellets 13.6% 60 min

56 gr. Willamette whole 5.1% 10 min

56 gr. Willamette whole 4.7% 0 min

Mash: 7 gallons of water + 2 tsp gypsum, mash in to 142.

At 10 minutes, raised to 148 using 1 gallon of boiling water.

Total mash time 90 minutes.

Sparge with 8.5 gallons at 170.

Collect 13.75 gallons at 1.053 = 87% efficiency. Either we got really great efficiency, or this is a particularly high-yielding batch of malt.

Boil 90 minutes, additions as noted.

Wyeast nutrient at 10 minutes, no whirlfloc.

Chilled to 68, collected about 5.5 gallons per carboy.

Oxygen for 1 minute per carboy, pitched an appropriate sized starter of Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast (3rd generation).

Started fermentation at 68 degrees, ramping a few degrees per day to reach 80 degrees by 1 week. Krausen fell at 6 days. When fermentation was almost negligible, I turned off the heat and let it finish out slowly. Racked to keg on 11/6/09. Tastes and smells great!

Then 2 days ago, I did another batch of Meetification, which is kind of an "extreme pale ale", if you believe in that sort of thing (I do). It's designed to be a little more sessionable than an IPA, but with an extreme dose of hop aroma and flavor. I have been craving a hopsickle lately, but I have had the Belgian yeasts going, so I just wanted to get a few batches out of them first.

I stuck with exactly the same recipe as the first time, but I mashed in a few degrees below at only 150. I really need to learn to control my mash-in temperature, as I have had erratic results using the new cooler mash tun. I changed the mineral additions on this one too, using 2 tsp of Burton salts in the mash, and 1 tsp in the boil.

"Meetification" Pale Ale

Recipe is for 7 gallons pre-boil, 6.2 gallons post boil, all-grain

O.G. 1.056 F.G. 1.008 ABV 6.3% IBU's 48

9 lb. 2-row American pale malt
1.5 lb. Glen Eagle Marris Otter
8 oz. Victory malt
6 oz. British Crystal 70

6 gr. Summit pellets 18.1% AA 60 min
28 gr. Summit pellets 18.1% 20 min
28 gr. Centennial pellets 8% 15 min
28 gr. Cascade pellets 6% 0 min
14 gr. Amarillo pellets 8.6% 0 min

Dry hops: 34 gr. Amarillo pellets, 22 gr. Summit pellets in the keg (in bags), dry hopped cold.

Mash: 4.5 gallons H20 + 2 tsp. Burton Salts.

Mash in to 150 for 60 minutes.
Sparged with 5 gallons water at 180
Collected 7 gallons at 1.050 = 84% efficiency.

Boil 60 minutes

Add 1 tsp Burton salts

Whirlfoc & Wyeast nutrient at 10 min.
Chilled, racked to carboy, and added pure oxygen for 60 seconds. Pitched an appropriate-sized starter of Wyeast 1056 at 68 degrees.

Fermented at 68 degrees for 10 days, then cold-crashed to 50 for 3 days

Racked to keg on 10/26/09. Some of the dank oniony qualities are coming through from the Summit.

Barrier Brewing Under Construction

My good friend Evan, who I worked with at Sixpoint, has been working on starting a nano-craft brewery for a few years now. I just heard from him, and he sealed the deal on a location!

If you are in New York State, look for Barrier Brewing beers in stores soon. Evan makes excellent beers, and I can't imagine him being anything but successful in his new business ventures.

Remember this guy from my earlier Sixpoint posts? That's Evan. Awesome brewer. Look out for the beers! I'm going to have to coerce him to send some out my way.

Upright Gose Brewday

Here are some pictures form my first day helping out Upright Brewery as an intern. Above is the tasting room. Most of the beers are named by number which is analogous to the original gravity (i.e. the Four is about 1.040 O.G.).

Here's a view of the other side of the tasting room, where many barrel projects are aging.

Their brewing system is a 10 barrel system. The strike water is heated with an electric element, and the boil kettle is direct-fire gas. It's made fairly locally, but I don't remember the name of the company. I stirred in the mash on the Gose, which was a fairly small grist, since we were only shooting for a 1.040 or so beer.

I didn't get a picture of this, but they did an overnight sour mash on about 20 pounds of grain in a cooler. This was smelly pretty sour and funky (think rotten fruit) when we got in, and I added it to the mash as I doughed in.

Here's a view of the open fermenter room (the gose didn't go in there, we put it in a conical). Upright's house yeast is Wyeast 3711 French Saison, which I've been a big fan of since the first time I used it last year. We used the house yeast on the Gose too.

Here's Alex operating the hand-cranked bottle labeler to label the 5, a hoppy pale beer.

We did some science stuff that I had never seen before. Garrit showed me how to a cell count on our pitch rate. After the beer was pitched and well mixed in the fermenter, we took a sample and dropped it onto a slide. The slide has a grid pattern and you can count how many yeast cells are in each square. I don't remember the cell count we got on this, but it was an ideal pitching rate, so we were pretty stoked!

It's cool to see yeast under a microscope. I had never seen that before!

Hood River Hops Fest, and a very un-hoppy Belgian Dark Strong

Above: new 70 quart mash tun with a Celebrator goat that Jamil gave me at NHC.

I've been trying to brew as much as possible for competition, and Roots is collaborating with the Oregon Brew Crew on a competition for an upcoming pinot noir/bourbon barrel aged brew. Only 2 categories are open for this competition: Baltic Porter and Belgian Dark Strong. My personal feeling is that a Baltic Porter might be a better beer to age in these barrels. But with limited time and a healthy yeast cake of trappist ale yeast, I went with the Belgian Dark Strong. There's really no way that this beer will have matured properly in only 21 days, which is the entry deadline. But, since I can just bottle up a few bottles with the Beergun, it's no big deal. I'll just keep rest of the beer in a keg until it's time to bottle the rest.

Below, you can see the detail on the new mash tun. I actually turn the pipes upside down when brewing so the slits are facing downward. Cutting and fitting all the pipes, and then using a hacksaw to cut the slits in the copper pipe was extremely time & labor intensive process! So my advice to anyone is to go with the stainless mesh tube in the bottom of the mash tun if you're doing a conversion like this.

So, I brewed the Belgian Dark Strong on Friday, and then on Saturday we took a trip to Hood River Oregon for the annual Fresh Hop Fest. The weather was supposed to be great, but unfortunately it was pretty rainy. This didn't seem to phase the Oregon beer revelers though!

There were tons of great beers there. As a brewer, I felt that it should have been better marked as to which beers were 100% fresh hop beers, and which used a mix of wet & dried hops. My favorite fresh hop beer, which not only used an excellent hop variety, but also displayed it perfectly by holding back on the crystal malts, was Widmer's Hopturnal Emission. It was brewed with fresh Summit hops, and the aroma was so inviting! The flavor was intense and hoppy.

I also really enjoyed: New Old Lompoc's Harvestman Red, which was brewed with fresh Crystal hops, had a juicy malt backbone and subtle hopping. It was an excellent session red ale. Rock Bottom's Octoberfist (yes, I spelled that right) was an excellent malty lager, with a touch of extra hop character from the fresh Hallertauer hops. Maybe the reason that some of my favorite beers were on the malty side is that after a whole day of drinking hoppy ales, my pallete was craving a change. There were many other great fresh hopped IPA's from other breweries, the full list of which can be found on the Hood River Hops Fest website.

Back to the brew: This is Jamil's Belgian Dark Strong recipe brewed pretty much straight up out of Brewing Classic Styles. The differences are:

• Recipe calls for WLP530 Abbey yeast. I used a blend of Wyeast 1214 and WLP 530.
• Recipe uses Hallertauer hops as a 60 minutes addition. I used Perle and Magnum.
• I had a little issue with not getting as good efficiency as I hoped for. I was at 66% instead of 70%. What I should have done is add a half pound of DME to make up for it, but instead my cheap ass spent an extra 40 minutes collecting the last runnings in another pot, boiling this on the stove at the same time as the regular boil, and then adding the runnings to the main pot once they could fit. While this was a big time-suck, I did hit all my numbers dead-on, and I don't think I picked up much extra caramelization.

Recipe is for 6 gallons post boil, all grain + sugar

O.G. 1.103 F.G. 1.023 ABV 10.7% IBU's 30

15 lb. Pilsner malt

3 lb. Munich malt

1 lb. caramunich 60

1 lb. aromatic malt

1 lb. special B

8 oz. Melanoidin malt

8 oz. Wheat malt

1 lb. corn sugar

15 gr. Magnum pellets 13.6%AA 60 min

6 gr. Perle pellets 7.1%AA 60 min

Mash: 6 gallons + 1 tsp gypsum, mash in a little low to 149

at 10 minutes into the mash, added about 1 gallon boiling water to bring up to 153

Total mash time 65 minutes

Sparge: 5 gallons at 170 degrees

Collect 8 gallons at 1.071 = 70% efficiency

Boil: about 2 hours, started in 2 pots. See above notes.

Sugar at beginning of boil.

Once boil volume was down to 7 gallons, started the timer at 90 minutes

Hops as noted, Whirlfloc and Wyeast nutrient at 10 minutes

Chilled to 68, whirlpooled, and collected 5.25 gallons

Oxygen for 2 minutes

Pitched 2 cups (half a yeast cake from the blond) of Wyeast 1214 & WLP 530

Ferment at 68 degrees for first 48 hours, then let slowly come up to 72 degrees over 1 week.

Took a gravity reading at 10 days, 1.023. Target was 1.024. Pretty good! tastes/smells pretty solventy, I guess that's to be expected at this age.

P.S. I just lined up a one day a week internship with Upright Brewery. Very exciting! Even if I'm not getting paid yet, it will be great to be brewing and learning.

Cheers & Brew Strong.

Sean / Chupa / Senior Wonton

New Kegerator, The search for a brewing job goes on, and a new beer is born.

Today I took a taste of the 2 wild ales I brought all the way across the country in cornelius kegs. Above, on the left is the all B. Bruxellensis session ale. I'm letting the sample de-gas to take the F.G., but it's very dry! The flavor is not incredibly brett-like or horsey, but it does taste like a good session beer. I'll do a full tasting later once it's fully carbonated.

On the right is me & Ray's Flanders Red, which is tasting good, and is has developed a moderate level of sourness, while retaining some sweetness and caramel flavors. I might take this keg back out and let it sour up for another 6 months.

In the middle is a mix of the 2 that came out of the beer line on my new kegerator. It tasted really good! Maybe better than either of the 2 beers separately.

Speaking of new kegerator:

I just finished up installing the gas and liquid lines on this baby yesterday. I went a little over budget on it, but thanks to a generous friend who shall remain nameless, I got a great deal on the faucets and all the liquid & gas hookups. So I went for a 3rd tap, couldn't help myself!

So I can now fit 8 kegs in at once, or 4 kegs and some fermenting lagers, plus some additional space for competition beers. Cool!

I also racked my first Portland (saison) brew to a keg, which is kind of perfumey, incredibly dry (1.004), and hoppy. I'm not sure what I think of it yet, but I am drinking it uncarbonated & at room temp. I think it leaves a somewhat cardboardy finish, which is not from oxidation, but maybe the extreme dryness is making the hops seem harsh? There is also the issue of Portland water, which contains some chloromines, and I haven't found time to by a water filter yet. It would be a nice thing to rule out, more than anything.

This week also marks 1 month that I have been in Portland. Although I haven't written anything on this blog about my job search out here, I am looking for brewing work, and believe me, it's not as easy as it might seem. So far my efforts have included going door to door to breweries and brewpubs to introduce myself, ask about work and give them a resume and a few homebrews, which I brought out specifically for that purpose. So far, only one or two breweries of maybe 12 has said that they were even hiring, and my main hope ended up hiring someone who has about 14 years experience as a brewer.

Instead of getting bummed, I have tried to keep my focus positive, and just do my best to truly immerse myself in the brewing scene here. That includes the work I have done making connections at breweries, as well as homebrewing a lot to give out more samples, and joining both the Oregon Brew Crew and the PDX brewers clubs. I'm also planning on entering as many local homebrew competitions as I can, and start stocking up beers to enter in the National Homebrew Competition.

This week I helped 2 breweries with their bottling days. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera. Upright Brewery initially really impressed me with "Flora Rustica", a saison brewed with some kind of flowers (it was an awesome saison, but I'm not sure what type of flowers were used or what they were supposed to smell like). They also have many other beers using Wyeast 3711 as a primary fermenter, and if you haven't tried them out, you should, because many of these beers are outstanding. I was particularly impressed with the "4", a session saison, and "Reggae Junky Gruit" which is spiced with lemongrass, szechuan peppers, and uses no hops at all. Yes, the name is a Ween reference. Upright uses a custom built bottling line for bottle conditioning 750 ml bottles. It is completely hand operated, and fills 6 bottles at a time. It's not an extremely fast setup, but with 4 people, we were able to prep, bottle 6 barrels of beer, and clean up in about 6 hours. Not bad!

New Old Lompoc 5th Quadrant brewpub produces a number of tasty beer styles, and has a fairly extensive barrel collection going on right now. They use a roving bottle filling business called Green Bottling. It's basically 2 guys running a labelling machine and a filling machine, which are unloaded from a truck into the brewery. I helped clean and pack the bottles into cases, and we got through 24 barrels of beer in about 4 hours! There were a lot of cool folks to get to know, and they sent me away with a backpack full of bombers.

So, the search for brewing work goes on. I'm just trying to stay positive, work hard, and brew strong! In the mean time, here's a beer I brewed up for the upcoming AHA club-only competition for Belgian Strong Ales. I brewed it up to be a Belgian Blond ale, but we'll see how it tastes once it's bottled and decide which category to enter it in. It bares a striking resemblance to Mr. T's 30 Pound Necklace, which did well as a tripel. I will probably not have time to bottle condition this one though. I'm planning on using the Beergun.

I used 2 different yeasts on this beer, because I had a starter of Wyeast 1214 (Chimay) yeast going, but I didn't see any activity in the starter after 8 hours! Wassup, Wyeast? I bought an additional tube of Whitelabs 530 (Westmalle) and pitched that in as insurance. It took awhile, but 24 hours later is was going strong. I think it will be just fine.

Blackeyed Blonde

Recipe is for 6 gallons post boil volume.

O.G. 1.068 F.G. 1.011 ABV 7.7% IBU's 27

9.5 lb. Pils malt

1 lb. wheat malt

4 oz. aromatic malt

2 oz. melanoidin malt

1 lb. corn sugar

8 oz. unrefined cane sugar

24 gr. Perle pellets 60 min

14 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 30 min

14 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 0 min

3.5 gallons mash water +1 tsp gypsum + 1 tsp Bruton salts

Mash in to 151, keep between 149-151 for 60 min

pH was 4.9 on the ColorpHast strips, 5.2 on the cheap strips.

After 60 minutes, raised to mash out 170 degrees

Sparge: 5 gallons at 165-170

Collect 6.9 gallons at 1.049 = 82% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes, sugar at start of boil

Hop additions as noted, Wyeast nutrient whirlfloc at 10 min

Chilled to 70, whirlpooled, and racked to carboy.

Oxygen for 70 seconds.

Pitched 1 qt. starter of Wyeast 1214

Also pitched 1 tube WLP 530

Fermentation did not take off for almost 24 hours, but then it was vigorous.

Ferment at 68 for 3 days, then let rise to 70 degrees.

Racked to keg on 10/2/09, I thought I picked up a bit of residual sulphur at this point.

I left the keg out for a few days, occasionally venting the headspace to let any sulphur out, and refilling it with CO2.