Brett and Mixed Fermentation in Kegs

Ingredients
1

Hi there,

Long time lurker first time poster (I think!!!)

I have a corny keg with a mixed fermentation in secondary and another keg with brett in secondary, sitting at 18 degrees C (64 F). These are my first brett and mixed fermentation beers in kegs.

I want to sample the beers to work out if I should enter them in a sour beer competition.

Being vials that were dumped into the keg, I would imagine a sizeable cake at the bottom of the kegs. I am not a fan of cutting the dip tubes, so I was thinking that I have a couple of options to drawing samples.

  1. Decant an amount of the slurry into a flask until the beer clears or
  2. Purge the keg, open the lid and drop a floating diptube, so I can draw off the top of the keg.

I like the idea of option 2 as it allows the beer to remain on the bacteria, but I am uncertain as to how long I can have the lid off before the chance of oxidisation. The mixed ferment keg has 10 psi of pressure and the brett keg a massive 22 psi. The beauty of option one is that the keg remains close however the beer will stop developing.

Looking for any advice on these suggestions and am open to new suggestions. I am not sure I’m even on the right track!!! hahahaha.  :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Crafty

2

I would choose option 1 because that way you don’t have to open the keg up and change dip tubes. Yeah, you’ll have a few pints of sludge before it clears up, but like you stated less oxygen exposure. You’ll also have plenty of brett in solution and even some left in the bottom.

3

There are enough microbes in suspension so you don’t need to worry about racking off the slurry at the bottom.  You want to reduce your oxygen ingress as much as possible with sour beers.

4

This.