[Village Taphouse]

I went through the low-ox approach over several years and was making beers with about a gram of KMeta, a gram of Brewtan B and a gram of Ascorbic Acid in a 5 gallon batch in the mash.  I would pre-boil the water and chill to mash temp before adding the water treatment and the grains to dough in with a mash cap (pizza pan that fit the mash tun perfectly with a silicone gasket).  After many, many batches, I pulled out the KMeta and Ascorbic Acid and quit using those.  Then eventually, I let go of the pre-boiling and simply avoided excessive splashing.  The beers seem to turn out fine (I won awards both ways), so I just live with the gentle stirring and modest boil to keep O2 at bay without undertaking more aggressive low O2 measures.  I am not saying that my Helles is just as good as the German brewers or low O2 adherents, but I haven't had one turned down when offered for as long as I can remember.

Just sayin'...KMeta isn't an absolute necessary addition to a good pale lager.

Instead of the boiling and chilling, I used (and still do) the yeast + sugar addition to the brewing water.  It's supposed to bring the O2 level down to close to zero within about 20 minutes.  I still have some of my low(er)-O2 processes in place but the SMB/AA is out of my process now. 

[KilroyWasHere]

Here is how it all turned out. I started this thread asking if it would be possible to use SMeta in the FERMENTER (plastic Spiedel) to scavenge some residual chlorine that I had left over from an attempted sanitation (stupid move on my part).
After attempting to clean to remove the chlorine with a soak of 140F water and SMeta, I ran a 2 gallon test batch consisting of 2 lbs DME, ½ lb of homemade candy syrup and some old hops. Fermented with Mangrove M41 which I knew would dry it out. I did not detect any chlorophenols in the finished 3.5% beer. It actually wasn’t bad.
I went ahead with a 5 gal batch of French Farmhouse, and following Martin’s suggestion that it might be worth a try, added SMeta to the fermenter. Fermented it with Lallemand Farmhouse and M41, the latter of which I knew could throw some sulfur. However, this batch threw sulfur like nothing I had ever smelled. Horrific. Similar to the experience cited above by Village Taphouse.
Let it ferment out and condition, total of about 3 weeks. Kegged and carbonated. Tasted off and I believe I could smell faint sulfur. I could not tell if I was tasting sulfur, or chlorophenol. I was looking for chlorophenol since I was trying to rescue the fermenter.
I was ready to dump the batch, it tasted bad. Then I re-read this thread, specifically the comments about sulfur. Thinking about how I could get rid of sulfur I recalled an episode of the brew files when Denny commented that to get rid of sulfur you throw a hunk of copper in the fermenter. Or at least that’s what I thought I recalled. I suspended a hunk of coper in the keg from the lid for about 4 hours, and it seems to have removed the bad flavor and my perceived sulfur smell. I can only conclude that it was in fact sulfur, not chlorophenol.
So that seems to have saved the batch, and I can corroborate the sulfur created in a fermentation containing SMeta. Again, my fermentation included a yeast that I knew to throw sulfur, so perhaps the SMeta amplifies the yeast’s production of sulfur. Meta-bisulfite, right?