Slow starting, cheese-smelling wheat beer?

[onelegout]

Hi all,
I brewed a wheat beer on tuesday, used munich yeast. I sanitised everything properly, rehydrated the yeast in cooled wort etc. but today when I went to check it, there has been no bubbling, no sign of krausen, just some tiny bubbles on the top, and they seem to make an organic-looking pattern on the top of the fermenting wort. On top of this it smells bad. The wort smells kind of like cheese.

I was using munich yeast. it's the first time I've used this yeast. Shouldnt it have a thick layer of krausen on top after a few days? Does it usually smell like a good stilton?

Thanks,
H

[TheMumbler]

I didn't use the same yeast but mine had a decent looking head pretty quickly. The fermentation did give off some fairly unpleasant smells.

[pantsmachine]

I had a cheese smelling beer once. I traced it to a combination of the S04 yeast and the Styrian hops i was using, Ferm temp would have been about 20degrees. It was bogging. Even after a year in the bottle there was still a cheese thing going on it it. I binned 36 ltrs and kept 8 bottles for trial(through out the year of development). I sincerely hope you have not been struck by a combination like that. What was the brew composition? Only thing i can suggest is to get it into as cool a place as possible and let the fermentation take place very slowly, might keep the off flavours at bay.

If you are fermenting in a normal range say 14 to 22 degs you should be bubbling away by now. Worst case reboil the wort for 1/2 hour to kill anything in it sterilise your FV and go again with fresh yeast. Drastic step i know but if its not looking good you still might get the goods going this way?

[CJBrew]

I don't know about a cheesy smell, but I have found wheat beer can smell really eggy when they're fermenting. Perhaps a higher sulphur content than barley malt? I don't know...