Shift

Recipes 

I'm going to start a Flanders Red tomorrow, using the roselare blend and perhaps a geuze dreg or two (add them in secondary or in primary?). I'm going to go the oak dowel way (except my dowel is juniper).
My question is about what stuff the dowel gets infested with, is it only brett or does lacto and pedio also reside in there?
Practically: if I'd to add the wood to another beer afterwards, what would/should it get?

Almighty

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A lot can reside in wood. The worst of it mold and bacteria. You can try to bake the dowel for a while to sanitize it.

Also juniper in a Flanders Red not sure that sounds good.

And I'm not a huge believer in the oak dowel method. I think more things can go wrong then the positives you can get.

Shift

Recipes 

Well, actually i want it to get infested to be used in later brews. I was just wondering what I could expect to get in there.

I'm not sure how much juniper flavor there will be in the end product, it smelled rather junipery when i peeled away the bark but it doesn't smell anything right now. Might be a bit "stupid" to experiment with a beer that I won't be tasting for a long time, but hey, atleast it might be something special.

What downside's are there? I believe I've avoided the two I know of. I'm adding the dowel in secondary so I'm not that worried about beer getting pushed through and mold developing. And I got a silicone stopper holding the dowel in place so there shouldn't be any risk of it cracking the neck of the demijohn.

Edit: I'm not quite sure if it's a flanders red or just some unholy sour brew, grain bill is equal parts of pilsner, pale and vienna with ~10 oz Special B. I'm still not decided whether to leave it sitting on the cake for a year (traditional for lambics, not flanders afaik) or to let it ride out in a primary before transfering to secondary. Yeast is Roselare blend and a dreg or two of "Oud Beersel Oude Geuze Vieille"

Almighty

Recipes 

So you picked a branch of juniper peeled back the bark and want to use it as a stopper. You have not prepared the wood in any way (baking, toasting, drying). I'm not sure wet wood will work too well. And you don't know what is in the wood already.Oak used for barrels is "conditioned" for years and then roasted to a certain level to pull certain flavors.

Even though you are adding this to secondary there will still be beer fermenting and there will be gas/liquid exchange through the wood.

These are just my thoughts but this style of beer is all about experimentation. So if you are going for it please let us know how it works for you.

Shift

Recipes 

It had been drying for a couple weeks now, anyway I was looking around here for pointers on how to toast it but in the end I decided not to.
1. Some thread pointed out that toxic wood isn't a good idea to use, so I looked up juniper and found that some parts were toxic due to thujone (flanders absinthe ). Didn't say anything about the wood itself though.
2. Oldsock said that he wasn't to impressed by the results (not a direct quote but more or less what he said) so I decided to skip it.

I racked it to secondary the other day and only put an airlock on it. I'll be adding some oak cubes (or juniper ) later on though.

__________________
Bottles: Belgian blonde
In bucket: Simcoe/Riwaka-(D)IPA, Belgian Dark Strong
Long term carboy: Flanders Red

Almighty

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I think that was a good choice to skip it this time.

If you are still interested in the flavor make a tea or tincture with it.

jtakacs

Recipes 

juniper belongs in gin. i'm all for experimenting and a brewing buddy of mine mentioned cedar the other day which sounds intriguing but juniper is S.T.rong. very potent... but ymmv obviously...

i agree with the almighty...