For you funky brewers out there. I just took my first stab at oak spirals, French medium toast, in a bad example of Berliner weisse with brett and lacto. Any chance I could harbor the microflora, and reuse the Oak spiral? I confidently assume yes, however how to store the spiral in the mean time? Zip lock bag? Or just on a shelf? My thought was I could kettle sour with it, or I could just throw into a long secondary and forget about a brew for a couple years.
I think your best bet would be to put into a secondary for long term aging.
For storing your wood (heheh), I think your best bet would be to fine some beer to keep it in. But you also have to be aware of minimizing O2 as this could lead to an overabundance of acetobacter which could be transferred to your next brew when you want to use it again.
I don’t know how well it works, but I have a friend who stores spirals in vacuum seal bags. I know he’s attempting to hold on to the bugs, but I can’t say for sure he’s had any success with it.
I’ve had success infecting a spiral with Brett, refrigerating it and infecting a beer with the Brett on the spiral. I have not tried to infect a spiral with lacto (or pedio) but I think it would work.
I would store it under beer. I definitely wouldn’t store it in the open. It’s wood, if it dries improperly then it’s going to grow mold. Also not sure you’ll have good luck drying out brett or lacto–especially brett.
Not sure an oak spiral is a great source for a kettle sour. Generally with a kettle sour you want a fast souring process to minimize oxidation. An oak spiral isn’t going to provide a very large volume of LAB.
Good point…
I’m not sure about Brett, but the spirals might be pretty good for storing kveik. Some cool reads from Lars Garshol:
Really good read thanks for the share