I was planning on doing my first mixed fermentation sometime soon, since I will be away for 2 months and figure it’s worth it to have something aging during that time. The trouble is that I got rid of all my glass fermenters a while back… and I am wondering if bugs stick to better bottles the same way they do to tubing and buckets and the like. Another option would be to do it in my kegs, but then I would be infecting a whole bunch of kegging equipment and beer line - and is that really any better than infecting a couple airlocks and 2 better bottles?
I’ve used Brett in a keg with no abnormal precautions. Regular cleaning and sanitation proceedings. No problem. I think the risk is over stated. Now, if you’re a large brewery and have the stuff floating around by the trillions… yes, they tend to crowd out the others. On our scale with an occasional couple of hundred billion I find that hard to believe.
As long as your better bottles are free from scratches you can use them without fear of contaminating future batches. Just give them a good cleaning and sanitizing the same as you would for any other batch. I tend to be a worrier in this regard as well so when I use one for Brett beers I double clean and sanitize, but that’s probably just overkill.
I haven’t had any problems.
I was wondering the same thing. I just put some B. lambicus cultures in my two better bottles, so I guess we’ll see in a few months after they’re done. I hardly ever do a secondary, and I hate fermenting in carboys because they’re a pain to clean.