How sour should a sour mash smell?

We do a soured milo for catfishing and this smells very similar. We take a 50 pond bag of milo, put it in a drum and cover with water. Leave out in the hot sun for 3-4 weeks and you got some good catfish bait.

I am following the UJSSM recipe and I am finishing the second generation.

After the first generation was run, I used 11/2 gallons back wash and 31/2 gallons water. When I racked off the first fermentation, I added water back into keep the yeast alive until I could finish my run. I took the backwash and added 7 pounds of white sugar and the remaining water. I add this to the corn when the temps reached around 85 degrees. This was 3 days ago.

Now I noticed it had a sour smell when racking, but figured this was normal, it is a sour mash recipe. I vacuumed it down to the corn and noticed the smell was stronger in the fermenter at the corn level. I added in some water until I can run this second batch. But, I am having some doubts which could be related to the above catfish soured grain bait.


Am I doing this properly?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Ps. I seemed to have stopped today so I lifted the lid to check. Not any activity so I did a hydrometer test and it was a little below 1.000.