What can you tell from fermentation smells

[Brewbie]

Hi peoples. I'm a newbie that has put on his very first brew with the following recipe:

1 x 1.7kg Morgans Australian Lager
1kg Brewblend Enhancer No 20 (Malt + Corn Oil + ??)
250g Enhancer No 10 (glucose + ??)
15g Morgans Cluster finishing hops
Yeast as provided with Morgans kit

I filtered all the water using activated carbon and boiled and cooled it just to be sure. Brew started bubbling within 6 hours and still going strong 2 days in at about 26 deg C.

I'm off overseas for a week so minimum time it will be in the primary will be 8 days.. I hope thats not too long.

You can probably tell from my water prep over-kill that I'm paranoid about an infection. Is it possible to tell whether you have one by the smell from the airlock ? Right now it doesnt smell too bad, but has a definte syrupy, cidery smell.... granted early days yet, I guess the stuff IS syrup. I just hope inhell that I have no cidery taste in the beer, else its going to become expensive plant fertilizer.

My question is what can you tell about the smell

[Dogger Dan]

If you can smell it and it doesn't smell like something from the local land fill all is well.

Sorry folks, I put down a peach and honey beer tonight. I think I got a lot more milage from the peaches than I thought I would.

Dogger

[thehipone]

Relax and dont worry. You most likely don't have an infection.

You don't need to go overboard with your water treatment, unless you are using something sketchy like well water or are trying to emulate munich or burton water or something like that.

The yeast need some of the minerals (Mg and Ca) to work, if you go through tons of steps to purify the water (using distilled water for example) it can make things tough for the yeast. Just using carbon is fine, just something to be aware of for future batches.

And is there a way to get the fermentation temperature down a touch, 26 is a little warm?

[BPJ]

Don't panic. The cidery taste that people refer isn't overpwoering, but is just there in the background. i used to make a simple brew of a can and a kilo of sugar, like many before me. It wasn't great but it wasn't bad either.

8 day in nothing, in fact it may not be enough.