Reusing "bugged" Oak Cubes

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splattsmier

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I plan to start making sours soon and have been gathering research on the subject. I'd like to reuse some oak cubes that will go into my sours to save some money versus buying new bugs every batch. My questions are

1) Will the beers be negatively affected by doing this?

2) What is the best way to store and reuse the "bugged" oak cubes? Freezing? Drying and storing? Preserving them in wine/wort? There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of info out there on this regarding souring bacteria/Brett.

Thanks! :mug:
 
One of the Sunday Session interviews with Vinnie has some good info. I can't remember which episode it is, I think it's the one with the NHC presentation which is also on AHA website if you're a member. If I recall, I think you want to dry very well after use, either in direct sun on a warm day, warm not hot oven, dehydrator etc. and then boil before use.
 
:smack: Didn't even think of that, Coff. Guess my subconscious thought it was too easy.

TNGabe, I think I stumbled upon that one already, but my desire is to keep the buggies around to inoculate future batches; boiling would kill them all off, no?
 
:smack: Didn't even think of that, Coff. Guess my subconscious thought it was too easy.

TNGabe, I think I stumbled upon that one already, but my desire is to keep the buggies around to inoculate future batches; boiling would kill them all off, no?

Not unless you boil for a very long time and perhaps not even then. Boiling will kill what's on the surface - some of the good bugs/critters and bad bugs like acetobacter, but not what's in the wood - good critters & maybe good bugs.
 
Not unless you boil for a very long time and perhaps not even then. Boiling will kill what's on the surface - some of the good bugs/critters and bad bugs like acetobacter, but not what's in the wood - good critters & maybe good bugs.

Thanks for the advice, bud. Cheers! :mug:
 
Not unless you boil for a very long time and perhaps not even then. Boiling will kill what's on the surface - some of the good bugs/critters and bad bugs like acetobacter, but not what's in the wood - good critters & maybe good bugs.
TNGabe, have you boiled cubes and then gotten bug activity out of them? i'd be quite concerned that bugs don't go that deep into the wood, and that boiling will in fact get enough heat deep enough to sterilize the cubes.

a common recommendation is to pour boiling water over cubes or wood chips before adding them to your brew - to sterilize them (and thus introduce wood tannins only, and no accidental bugs). i can only imagine that actively boiling wood cubes for any amount of time will do more damage than just pouring in boiling water - which is in itself a sufficient means of sterilization...
 
TNGabe, have you boiled cubes and then gotten bug activity out of them? i'd be quite concerned that bugs don't go that deep into the wood, and that boiling will in fact get enough heat deep enough to sterilize the cubes.

a common recommendation is to pour boiling water over cubes or wood chips before adding them to your brew - to sterilize them (and thus introduce wood tannins only, and no accidental bugs). i can only imagine that actively boiling wood cubes for any amount of time will do more damage than just pouring in boiling water - which is in itself a sufficient means of sterilization...

I should have made it clear that I haven't and am just repeating Vinnie's advice from the AHA presentation. I'm too lazy to save cubes. IIRC he was talking about boiling chips, so I assumed that cubes, being larger, could be boiled. I'm with Coff on using dregs/trub from previous batches instead.
 
I should have made it clear that I haven't and am just repeating Vinnie's advice from the AHA presentation. I'm too lazy to save cubes. IIRC he was talking about boiling chips, so I assumed that cubes, being larger, could be boiled. I'm with Coff on using dregs/trub from previous batches instead.

So should I collect the dregs from several bottles as I drink them and just keep them in a sterilized Mason jar or something in the fridge? Would that work? Any better ideas?
 
splattsmier said:
So should I collect the dregs from several bottles as I drink them and just keep them in a sterilized Mason jar or something in the fridge? Would that work? Any better ideas?

I've heard of other people doing that. The guy who is interviewed on the most recent solera episode of Basic Brewing Radio talks about doing that. Again laziness comes into play so I never have. I've always though it had a higher risk of acetobacter contamination than direct pitching dregs.
 
I've heard of other people doing that. The guy who is interviewed on the most recent solera episode of Basic Brewing Radio talks about doing that. Again laziness comes into play so I never have. I've always though it had a higher risk of acetobacter contamination than direct pitching dregs.

So would you recommend just pitching one bottle worth of dregs or add a few bottles worth as I drink them? I'm kinda lost when it comes to dregs harvesting
 
one way of reusing bugs from a sour beer is to pitch a fresh beer on top of the cake of a freshly racked older beer. so time your new beer to coincide with the racking of your old beer. you might want to add a little sacc to the new beer, since there won't be any left in the cake (depending how old the old beer is, but after 6 months you should have very few viable sacc cells).

alternately, you can pitch the dregs from bottles of the old batch after you drink the bottle. personally i'd avoid pitching them individually, opening up your carboy to pitch the dregs of just one bottle each time. suggestion: when you have a few folks over to try your sour, pour the beers into glasses, and pitch all the dregs in one go into the carboy.

the more bugs you pitch, the faster they'll get to work. so pitching on to a cake will sour a beer much faster than just adding the dregs of a few bottles.
 
I know you got away from the original way of thinking in your thread, but I just found it,so,hey.
Back to your original question, I know for fact that it is possible to use the oak cubes, because I had very cool hombrewers over in the States ( you guys are the best) send me oak cubes used in Brett brews and even a Roselare brew, from which I was able to re-culture the bugs. Some of which I am now using for the 6-7th time as primary fermenters.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions, guys. Sweetcell, just for sake of clarity your suggesting I pitch on top of the souring cake (in secondary); I'm supposed to rack off of the primary cake to avoid autolysis, right? For the record I'm aware of the hot debate regarding autolysis at the home brew level. I just want to double check.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions, guys. Sweetcell, just for sake of clarity your suggesting I pitch on top of the souring cake (in secondary); I'm supposed to rack off of the primary cake to avoid autolysis, right? For the record I'm aware of the hot debate regarding autolysis at the home brew level. I just want to double check.
autolysis isn't a big issue with sours, because brett cleans that up. dying sacch spews its guts, brett eats those guts. traditional flanders reds spend 12-18 month (or longer) in primary, on the original yeast.

so rack if you want to, but don't be too concerned about racking cleanly. in fact, sucking up a little sacc to feed the brett is beneficial.

yeast autolysis is a concern when doing sacch-only brews.
 
I have various growlers of brett/bacteria lying around, as well as sour cultures that I just feed every few months, similar to a sour dough starter, works well.
 
autolysis isn't a big issue with sours, because brett cleans that up. dying sacch spews its guts, brett eats those guts. traditional flanders reds spend 12-18 month (or longer) in primary, on the original yeast.

so rack if you want to, but don't be too concerned about racking cleanly. in fact, sucking up a little sacc to feed the brett is beneficial.

yeast autolysis is a concern when doing sacch-only brews.

Interesting stuff. Thanks again for all the info, I'm feeling much more confident about sour protocol now
 
sweetcell said:
autolysis isn't a big issue with sours, because brett cleans that up. dying sacch spews its guts, brett eats those guts. traditional flanders reds spend 12-18 month (or longer) in primary, on the original yeast. so rack if you want to, but don't be too concerned about racking cleanly. in fact, sucking up a little sacc to feed the brett is beneficial. yeast autolysis is a concern when doing sacch-only brews.

I got some homebrew in a wild/sour tasting swap that had some serious autolysis off flavors so it's not impossible.

What do you mean by 'traditional Flanders reds'? I think it could be argued that, at least in Flanders, there is no longer a traditional brewery, but setting that aside, Rodenbach ferments in primary fermenter before transferring to foudres. (p171-172 in Wild Brews) Lambic is aged and fermented in the same vessel generally, though I'm not sure if that is true with the foudres at Boon.
 
I got some homebrew in a wild/sour tasting swap that had some serious autolysis off flavors so it's not impossible.

What do you mean by 'traditional Flanders reds'? I think it could be argued that, at least in Flanders, there is no longer a traditional brewery, but setting that aside, Rodenbach ferments in primary fermenter before transferring to foudres. (p171-172 in Wild Brews) Lambic is aged and fermented in the same vessel generally, though I'm not sure if that is true with the foudres at Boon.

You sure it wasn't some in-between stage for the bugs? I've heard of some pretty odd flavors/aromas at different stages of development.
 
You sure it wasn't some in-between stage for the bugs? I've heard of some pretty odd flavors/aromas at different stages of development.

Very much. Have you ever had beer that tastes like meat? That's dead yeast. I don't think it will go away.
 
TNGabe, I think I stumbled upon that one already, but my desire is to keep the buggies around to inoculate future batches; boiling would kill them all off, no?

Yes.

So should I collect the dregs from several bottles as I drink them and just keep them in a sterilized Mason jar or something in the fridge? Would that work? Any better ideas?

Add a bit of a sour that's going the right way to co-inoculate or steer another batch in that direction.
 
Back to the original question -
If you wanted to reuse oak to preserve bugs then do not boil, sterilize, etc. Just save the oak pieces in a sterilzed jar or a bag in the fridge until you're ready to use them again. Bugs do go deep into the wood and will grow more of themselves once introduced into a new wort. Boiling the wood to kill the bugs seems counterproductive to what you're trying to do here it seems. I regularly reuse barrel stave chunks in this manner and keep them in the fridge with the rest of my yeast.
 
I got some homebrew in a wild/sour tasting swap that had some serious autolysis off flavors so it's not impossible.
not impossible? based on this one example, sure. but highly, highly unlikely. sours can throw all sorts of flavors, good and bad - autolysis isn't one we need to worry about.

the autolyzed sour you tasted - did it have brett in it? i'm thinking a lacto-only sour could show that off-flavor.


What do you mean by 'traditional Flanders reds'? I think it could be argued that, at least in Flanders, there is no longer a traditional brewery, but setting that aside, Rodenbach ferments in primary fermenter before transferring to foudres. (p171-172 in Wild Brews) Lambic is aged and fermented in the same vessel generally, though I'm not sure if that is true with the foudres at Boon.

indeed, there are no more "traditional flanders" breweries - they've all gone modern. i had a brainfart: i meant to say that lambics stay in primary. flanders are in fact racked to secondary.
 
Back to the original question -
If you wanted to reuse oak to preserve bugs then do not boil, sterilize, etc. Just save the oak pieces in a sterilzed jar or a bag in the fridge until you're ready to use them again. Bugs do go deep into the wood and will grow more of themselves once introduced into a new wort. Boiling the wood to kill the bugs seems counterproductive to what you're trying to do here it seems. I regularly reuse barrel stave chunks in this manner and keep them in the fridge with the rest of my yeast.

If works for you, than by all means carry on, but that seems like a recipe for acetobacter to me. Traditional wild brewers steam clean their barrels. Hot water or steam should kill the stuff on the surface like acetobacter, but not the brett and bacteria inside the wood. Maybe steaming homebrew would to reuse would be a better plan, but personally I'd want to do something to sanitize surface as much as possible.

not impossible? based on this one example, sure. but highly, highly unlikely. sours can throw all sorts of flavors, good and bad - autolysis isn't one we need to worry about.

the autolyzed sour you tasted - did it have brett in it? i'm thinking a lacto-only sour could show that off-flavor.

I'm pretty familiar with the variety of flavors wild beers can have during their life cycles, but meat shouldn't be one of them. I'm sure brett can only clean up so much dead yeast and I would imagine doing something like pitching onto the entire cake of another beer would exacerbate the problem. The beer was also in a bucket for a year or something so it had several issues.
 
If works for you, than by all means carry on, but that seems like a recipe for acetobacter to me. Traditional wild brewers steam clean their barrels. Hot water or steam should kill the stuff on the surface like acetobacter, but not the brett and bacteria inside the wood. Maybe steaming homebrew would to reuse would be a better plan, but personally I'd want to do something to sanitize surface as much as possible.

I'm pretty familiar with the variety of flavors wild beers can have during their life cycles, but meat shouldn't be one of them. I'm sure brett can only clean up so much dead yeast and I would imagine doing something like pitching onto the entire cake of another beer would exacerbate the problem. The beer was also in a bucket for a year or something so it had several issues.

Not to play devil's advocate or anything, but perhaps the conditioning vessel contributed to accelerated autolysis? Pure speculation on my part, but it seems possible.
 
Not to play devil's advocate or anything, but perhaps the conditioning vessel contributed to accelerated autolysis? Pure speculation on my part, but it seems possible.

I think that's plausible. I just don't like to leave beer on excessive amounts of trub for extended aging to be safe. I've got two batches of lamebic going now that are both on the lees, but there isn't nearly as much as there is with beers that have a big sacc primary.
 
Back to the original question -
If you wanted to reuse oak to preserve bugs then do not boil, sterilize, etc. Just save the oak pieces in a sterilzed jar or a bag in the fridge until you're ready to use them again. Bugs do go deep into the wood and will grow more of themselves once introduced into a new wort. Boiling the wood to kill the bugs seems counterproductive to what you're trying to do here it seems. I regularly reuse barrel stave chunks in this manner and keep them in the fridge with the rest of my yeast.

Good info, thanks. If I decide to attempt this method of re-inoculation (though I've been steered away for a few reasons) I'll definitely follow your advice.
 
I think that's plausible. I just don't like to leave beer on excessive amounts of trub for extended aging to be safe. I've got two batches of lamebic going now that are both on the lees, but there isn't nearly as much as there is with beers that have a big sacc primary.

Good point; I think a 100% Brett beer (for example) would have a significantly different autolysis worry vs a brew with a lot of sacc trub. I'm far from a chemist, though

Edit : yes I know Brett is a sacc strain.
 

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