I'm not an expert, but try setting:
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
...
keepalive_timeout 0 0;
}
where http://127.0.0.1:8000 is the address:port of your erlang web server.
Nginx defaults to keep_alive of 75 seconds.
If that doesn't work, try adding:
add_header Connection close;
--
Jim Ohlstein