Sanitizing After Lambic

Hi everyone, I bottled my 1 year old Lambic a few days ago. Anyways, I used my bottling equipment that I use for my normal beers. Afterwards I soaked everything in the bottling bucket mixed with a mild bleach solution. I have sinced rinsed with hot water and soaked with brewery cleaner. Do I need to do anything else other than sanitize as normal before bottling other beers?

It is the hoses that are the hardest to clean. I have an extra set.

I keep a second set of hoses and a separate racking cane for sour beers. I also have separate fermentation vessels as well. While I do concede the fermentation vessels may be overkill, it can be really hard to get the little souring bacteria out of the hoses and the racking cane. Not saying it can't be done, but I don't think the risk of potentially infecting another batch is really worth the relatively inexpensive cost of a separate set of stuff for racking/bottling sour beers.

Well, I think at the very least I will just go ahead and replace the tubing.

+1 with the above posts. I use carboys interchangably (sp?), but I keep a separate racking cane and tubing.

I had the same question recently, and sent an email to the mad fermentationist. He sent me this link:

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/11/brewing-sour-beer-at-home.html

"Sanitation: These days I keep a second set of post-boil plastic (tubing, auto-siphon, bottling wand, bottling bucket, and thief) for my sour beers. There is no need to have a separate mash tun, boil kettle, wort chiller, or anything else that touches the wort when it is still hot. I do use the same pool of Better Bottles for fermentation and glass bottles for storage for all of my beers.

I clean all of my equipment with a long soak in hot tap water and Oxyclean Free. Once it is completely free of visible debris I rinse it in hot water, then soak it in cold water and either Iodophor or Star-San (I alternate them to keep the microbes well behaved). I have had two infected batches over the five years I have been homebrewing, but these may or may not have been the result of sour beers (the first one probably was, but I suspect the second one was not).

There is no reason to segregate your fermenters into different areas during fermentation/aging. I have my clean and funky beers on different sides of the same room just to ensure I don’t disturb the sours while I am moving the clean beers around."

I suggest you read the whole blog post - it's a great read on all things home sour brewing.

well I went ahead and bottled my beer with all the same equipment. I oxi soaked, then mild bleach solution, then iodine solution, then star-san at bottling lol. If anything lives through that then have at my Baltic Porter.

BradleyBrew said:

well I went ahead and bottled my beer with all the same equipment. I oxi soaked, then mild bleach solution, then iodine solution, then star-san at bottling lol. If anything lives through that then have at my Baltic Porter.

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I did this once. And soured my Rye IPA. And then I bought new plastic equipment for my clean beers.

Two years later, I still replace my clean plastic gear periodically and retire the old stuff to my sour beers.

AmandaK said:

I did this once. And soured my Rye IPA. And then I bought new plastic equipment for my clean beers.

Two years later, I still replace my clean plastic gear periodically and retire the old stuff to my sour beers.

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you cleaned & sanitized with 3 chemicals and it still soured the next beer? Well I guess I"m $hit outta luck! Lessoned learned..skip soured beer making

I wouldnt say you're definitely SOL. I re-use all the same equipment and haven't had any infections. I do sporadically get some when I bottle off the kegs though, but the kegs themselves never get one even when left at room temp. so either im dumb and occassionally forget to sanitize my picnic tap line after using it with brett/sour beers or i have a stingy growth in my bottling wand

I really don't have any experience with this seeing as I haven't even racked my 6 month Flanders Red yet but when I do I plan on purchasing anything new that is plastic that would come in contact with it. Any tubing, racking cane, beer thief and especially the bottling bucket. That one seems like it's the biggest piece of equipment so has the most chance of getting infected.

These bugs are tougher to get ride of than your normal bacteria/wild yeast.

well I will report back with my porter.

I know this is an old thread, but I am hoping to get a reply anyway. I have a wine thief that I have used to sample a souring stout from a bourbon barrel that I have. No problem so far, as I keep my sour stuff separate from my clean stuff. However, somehow (whether in a drunken stupor or someone else did it unknowingly) it got stored in my clean bottling bucket with my clean bottling lines and what not. Do I need to replace everything yet again just in case or are the chances of infection just from being in the same general vicinity low? If I just use a strong bleach solution before normal sanitation processes will that probably take care of the issue?

The only problem I had was in my bottles. I had to toss a few because I couldn't get them visibly clean after spending a year in the bottle.