First time posting here, thanks in advance for any feedback.
I have an English brown ale that I brewed 4 weeks ago, on one of the hotter days of the heat wave we had in NC. The brew process had a number of issues including high fermentation temperatures and I pitched the beer onto a 2nd use yeast cake (first time trying that method.) I realized I had gotten an infection (lacto) when I popped the top on my fermentor bucket but decided to ride the wave and see if I could salvage a decent sour out of it. I have since transferred the beer to a keg and “dry hopped” it with american oak chips for 7 days. Do I need to add anything else to the beer before I carb it up? How long should I wait to put the CO2 on it and drink it? Do I need to throw out that fermentor bucket and any accessories that touched the beer? Thanks again.
-Pete
On tap: Sweet Breezy Wheat, Buzzed Lightyear Session Ale
Secondary: Hoppily Ever After IPA, Lacto Brown
Any plastic or rubber that touched it will be contaminated forever. Time to replace that stuff. A few years ago I was in a rut where a half dozen batches turned out sour. Eventually I decided enough is enough, and converted from plastic to all glass fermenters. The only trouble I have had since was when I oaked a batch. The oak itself contaminated the beer and ruined it. I guess I should have taken extra precautions against contamination from the oak. Oh well. Lessons learned. We all need to learn the hard way sometimes. Fortunately, Lacto soured beers taste pretty good, and I had several of those batches that I actually was able to enjoy, some more than others. It’s the other wild bugs out there that cause problems. I don’t know what was in that oak, but whatever it was… yuck.
In my opinion, good cleaning and sanitation should do the trick. If you are really worried, fine, but I think good practices and you should be able to use the fermenter again.
I sincerely hope I don’t have to replace all the rubber in a keg that had my first sour in it. I’m gonna give it a good cleaning and sanitizing, but I don’t plan on tossing the stuff. I may swap the keg line, but that is rather difficult to clean and I’ll keep the old one for my next kegged sour.
Any bucket or plastic part that has been contaminated with an undesirable yeast or bacteria can be sanitized. It might not be worth your time or effort, but it is possible.
I’ve never had a problem with the keg being contaminated - just a good soaking in PBW for the rubber parts and poppets did the trick. But the serving line and Covra tap is permanently dedicated as “sour only” and the word sour is written on it with permanent marker to avoid confusion. And rather than worrying, I did the same labeling on my souring buckets.
Thanks everyone! So I operate a single line kegerator, can I run my sour on it and then run a keg of star san water through it afterward or should I plan on bottling the sour batch?
I don’t take any particular precautions with kegs and lines that have dispensed sour beers, but I do disassemble and clean them between beers. Also all my kegged beers are refrigerated. So far no problems.
And remember that Star San doesn’t preclude cleaning - it is only for sanitizing an already clean item. I would suggest PBW or BLC or a good soaking in a product that cleans, before rinsing and sanitizing with Star San.