Keeping the brew house clean with wild yeast?

I have a 6 gallon carboy labeled "wild" with a label maker. Tap #2 and Keg #2 and those respective lines are also labeled "wild" and that's about it.

I figured simply using one fermenter and one tap for wild beer would be good enough to keep things clean.

Is that not good enough? I've seen some guys here talk about only bottling their wild beers because they don't want to risk infection with kegs. Honestly, I was debating just filling my bath tub with star san and soaking all of my stuff in them to get rid of all wild yeast but maybe that's not good enough.

Right now, I've only brewed with Brett and Lacto. I'm about to brew a Lambic and a Saison Brett clone in a few weeks so, as I do more wilds, it would be good to keep the risk of infection with my other beers as low as possible.

Thoughts?

 

I would recommend that any plastic that touches sour beer be dedicated to sour beer use only. I had a nasty wild yeast infection for a few batches in a row because I was too stubborn to buy new plastic. My situation has left me paranoid enough that I would even recommend storing the sour plastic in a different place than the non-sour plastic.

Metal and glass can be more easily cleaned and sanitized, so I don't worry about those as much.

 

Agreed. Separate anything plastic. I think kegs are fine to swap back and forth as long as you replace the gaskets/tubing each time, or use one dedicated like you mentioned. As for fermentation, I ferment my wilds and clean beers in a chest freezer next to each other and have had zero issues. When I take samples I open the clean vessel first and dip a separate thief into each carboy, never had an issue.

 

Thanks. So I'll keep lines dedicated and labeled. I'm going to get a few more better bottles and kegs since I'm doing more Brett beers this month. I'll just keep 3 kegs and 3 fermenters dedicated to wild beers and diligently clean all equipment.

 

I'd also just like to say be sure to wash your hands and keep your wild beers at least 6 feet away from any non-wild beers.

 

ha, they can somehow ninja their way out and into fermenters, but 6 foot distance is their deterrent?

OP, what you're doing is plenty fine. I use the same equipment (plastic, glass, kegs, whatever) regardless of what goes in it and haven't gotten any cross-contamination. all my fermentation takes place near each other too. the only change i do is that after my brett or sour beers i'll give the equipment an extended soak in pbw then starsan. obviously keeping separate equipment is the safest bet, i just find it overkill

 

When I first started with sour beer, I kept all plastic separate but I have since calmed down a lot with no real issues. In >3 years of brewing sour beer (probably ~70 clean batches, ~30 sour or with brett) I've had exactly one unintentional infection - when I kegged a mild into a keg I had just emptied of 100% brett IPA. I'd rinsed and sanitized, but not disassembled, the keg.

As for proximity (I can't tell if that was a joke?), I had an IS in a utopias/bourbon barrel right next to a very sour blonde in a red wine barrel for 9 months. No infection in the IS.

 

So you don't agree that at least 6 feet is good? You'd move your beers past the 6-foot barier?

 

I subscribe to the 6x6 foot rule. If my sours are less than 36 feet from my clean beers, the risk of infection increases by 60%

I need to stop.

 

I was being sarcastic. The vicinity a sour/brett beer is to a clean beer has no correlation to infection rate. They can't penetrate through a fermenter

 

I keep a set of sour/brett plastics, including racking cane, tubing, bottling wand, and bottling bucket. I also have a couple plastic fermenters that I use exclusively for wild ales. I try to perform brewery tasks on clean beers before I work on wild beers (like bottling a pale ale before bottling a brett beer). I also try to star san or wash my hands if I'm going back and forth.