So I brewed a sour beer, a Kriek, in a PET bucket. It spent over a year in this bucket. I have no plans for a new sour beer. My question is, what to do with the bucket now. I was thinking I could use it as my sanitization bucket? or should I just leave it empty until my next sour beer?
I wouldn’t risk it. If You really need a sanitizer bucket PET buckets are cheap. Why take the chance?
Label it as your sour bucket and just leave it aside till your next sour.
My 1.5 cents.
It’s not bad advice to not reuse that bucket for “regular” beers anymore. Nonetheless, it’s reusable. Give it a good scrub with a non-scratch sponge and hot alkaline cleanser, to get the biofilm off the walls and bottom. Then scrub it again. After rinsing well, fill it with an extra-strength solution of bleach or iodophor. Let it sit overnight. Rinse well, and you’re good to go. You’ll likely still have some non-sacc cells lingering in the bucket, but no more or less than in your “regular” beer fermenters.
+1
PET containers, by nature, clean quite well if done properly.