Pellicle noob question

[dobie99]

Ok - been brewing a while, but I'm a noob to this side of things. Here's my perhaps silly question:

When you have a nice pellicle going, one which covers the entire surface of the brew, how do you break through it to sample/rack?
Do you just jam the thief/auto-siphon/racking cane through and hope you don't get too much gunk with your sample? Or do you poke a hole with something else first -- and if so, what do you prefer to use? Do you have to worry about pushing any of the pellicle down into the beer, disturbing things, or anything like that?

I'm sure as usual this is probably one of those RDWHAHB moments, but it can't hurt to ask what people like to do.

Thanks!

 

[statseeker]

Use a seperate wine thief and sample away. The brett will reform that pellicle in the area you sampled from. Just do not use your brett thief in your clean beers and vise versa. Keep your sour equipment away from your clean stuff as a rule.

 

[marvaden]

Just be gentle with the beer like you would any other beer to make sure you don't oxygenate it.

Other than that, use a glass wine thief with rigorous cleaning/sanitization principals or have a special "wild" wine thief for your crazy stuff.