Along with other brewing activities I thought I'd start a Berliner Weisse sour mash today (2 gallon small batch). I've got a decent handle on the process between reading this BYO article http://***********/stories/techniques/article/indices/9-all-grain-brewing/1723-sour-mashing-techniques, viewing Sean Coates blog/listening to him on Basic Brewing Radio, and other research. Honestly it's a rather simple process.
My question is simple, does a sour mash off-gas? If placed into a sealed container would it need an airlock or risk exploding the container? I'm guessing it does off-gas. However if it doesn't there's no reason one couldn't seal up a container filled with mash while it's in the sour mash phase. The idea is once the mash is inoculated pouring it into a plastic jug, squeezing the air out to prevent oxygen exposure/acetobacter growth. This would also make maintaining a fairly constant temp easy as the 'mash jug' could be placed inside a cooler filled with proper temp water.
If as I suspect this isn't possible I'll be pouring the mash into a modified gallon jug, placing plastic wrap on top of the mash, then placing the jug in a cooler and adding proper temp water.
My question is simple, does a sour mash off-gas? If placed into a sealed container would it need an airlock or risk exploding the container? I'm guessing it does off-gas. However if it doesn't there's no reason one couldn't seal up a container filled with mash while it's in the sour mash phase. The idea is once the mash is inoculated pouring it into a plastic jug, squeezing the air out to prevent oxygen exposure/acetobacter growth. This would also make maintaining a fairly constant temp easy as the 'mash jug' could be placed inside a cooler filled with proper temp water.
If as I suspect this isn't possible I'll be pouring the mash into a modified gallon jug, placing plastic wrap on top of the mash, then placing the jug in a cooler and adding proper temp water.