I was thinking of this the other day and got to wondering about the logic. I understand not wanting to potentially contaminate clean regular beer by sharing post boil equipment. So a lot of brewers suggest that when your post boil equipment gets old or scratched you should just hand it down to your sours. You don’t want some Brett or a bug hiding in rubber or a scratch and then contaminating clean beers.
Ok, but my sour beers are the most expensive and take a whole lot longer to make. Plus, I don’t just spontaneous ferment them. I select exactly what I want in them. If pedio can contaminate a clean beer it can contaminate a sour too. Granted, it could still turn out alright but anything at all that you don’t want is still contamination.
First off, why is it considered handing DOWN, when sours are far more expensive and time consuming?
Second, just because they might have Brett and bugs doesn’t mean you are carelessly throwing just whatever in there.
I think post boil sour equipment should be given at least as much care and respect as regular old clean beer.
I agree with you. Things like tubing, racking canes, etc. make a lot more sense to me. Wild beers are a secondary element of this hobby as they tend to age so long. So I ‘hand’ down some of my plastic and vinyl. I rather think of it as dedicate.
I am not sure anyone is saying not to treat the gear any different - all should be clean and sanitary. Most are afraid of the risk of contamination in a clean beer - so if the ‘clean’ fermentation bucket develops a bacterial infection (but otherwise in good shape) it makes sense to use for sour beers. I still have some Speidels, and an unintentional contamination in one, but I cleaned it, sanitized and replaced the seals/spigot and have run clean beers through it many times. All my stainless, I keep separate TC gaskets for wild beers, and autoclave the stainless fittings after.
I don’t separate my sour and clean beer equipment - including plastic tubing and other soft parts. I feel like a clean and sanitary environment should work for both. I guess the one exception I have is that I do all of my “sour” fermentations in glass carboys, while I will occasionally use plastic for clean fermentation.
I get the whole sour thing as a throwback to how beer most likely was up until a couple hundred years ago. But I don’t think that’s why most people like sours. I never like sucking on warheads, why would I like drinking sours?
Either way, I get what you’re saying. I wouldn’t want to contaminate a beer I want with Brett with Pedio also. It might turn out that you like it, but it’s not what you’re after. I think the only way to do something like this is to use stainless steel equipment and be done with it. Then you don’t have to worry about any contamination. Or at least shouldn’t have to.
I think the more valid reasoning is that if your equipment is old and has scratches, and you use it for sour beers, the critters may survive in the scratches after normal cleaning. If you then use that equipment for non-sour beer, it may get infected.
The best argument out there for this is that if you end up with some scratches in equipment with a little brett in there then it’s probably not a big deal because the next beer passing through that equipment probably includes brett too so there’s no real risk of infecting subsequent beers.
It’s not a great argument. As you said, not ever sour or brett beer is going to have the same LAB or brett strains and a sour or brett beer can still be contaminated by dirty equipment in an undesirable manner.
I have some old pieces of bottling equipment that get used very rarely for sour beer. The vast majority of my bottling equipment is used on both clean and sour/brett beers. It’s not like brett is indestructible.
Right! Might thinking at this point is that sanitation is just as important regardless of beer style. So you either need separate equipment for each beer that uses that specific yeast, or you need to just be thorough with cleaning and sanitation so that it doesn’t matter what beer you are making. The one slight variance to this is that some sacc strains don’t do well in an acidic environment, so if you are doing a lacto/pedio beer, you might not have to worry about a couple dozen sacc strains sneaking in.
Regardless of beer style, sanitation is vital. Don’t assume that sour beers can be properly handled in just whatever
If you have solid sanitation you don’t need separate gear
Agreed. Plus,assuming all “sour” beers are nothing but super sour or super horsey is akin to saying I don’t like craft beer cuz they’re all 100 IBUs. There’s all types and levels of those types.
Off topic a bit, but here is the aftermath of Sunday’s beer share with a few old friends. It was definitely a “pucker up” day!
On topic: I think you’re spot on Jim. I did end up “handing down” my sour equipment, but it was all in great condition. If it wasn’t, I would have replaced it for sure. I replace tubing often anyway.
Most memorable beers for me were the Upland Peach “Lambic”, The Rare Barrel Supermassive. The Monkish Rara Avis (dry hopped Brett beer) was a nice break from all the super sour stuff and may have edged out the Cantillon beers because of this.
Winner winner may have been the Upland Peach, IMO. That beer was extremely sour while also tasting exactly like a peach. Way good.
It is unlikely I will see a Sunday like that anytime in the near (or distant) future, but when old friends travel cross country, everyone gives their best.
Yeah, well, I was generalizing. I am just not a sour fan. I’ve tried multiple sours. Haven’t had any of the ones listed but I’ve had some that I’m sure some people would consider “world class”. I just think it’s funny to be so into contaminated beer. It’s probably how all beer tasted up until about 200 years ago.
Alright, I’m out, I’m really not trying to be a troll here. I realize everyone has different preferences and tastes.
No worries. You are not alone. I’m Belgian, I have six brothers, and I’m the only one in my family (except for SWMBO, whom I carefully selected and trained) that is really into sour beer.
Absolutely no offense taken here. Its ok to not like sour beer. I just think you’re missing out and probably haven’t tried the ones you’d like yet. Some of todays sours probably taste like beer from 200 years ago. But on the other hand, I think some of today’s sours, and sours yet to be made, are a whole other animal and far better than anything from the past.
So… how about treating fermenters the way commercial sour brewers treat incoming used wine barrels? In other words, say you’re done with this year’s sour brewing and rather than set aside that fermenter for the next sour brew day next year, clean it. Then fill it with potassium metabisulphate and citric solution. Store till regular brew day. Dump, rinse well, and starsan it.
Anyone see problems with that which I am not aware of? Is it bad for high density plastic, like Speidels?