So how evil is sours for equipment?

[toddo97]

Hi all--very new brewer here. I did my first, small, 1 gallon batch three weeks ago and have about 2 weeks left of bottle time before I can see how it turned out. I did a 2.5 gallon BW this past weekend and would like to do a 5 gallon IPA on Saturday (I may be going a little fast with this, but I'm afraid I'm addicted already.....). I've read that once you brew with sours, you pretty much need new equipment for other stuff. I'm going to buy a new 6.5 gallon bucket fermenter for my next batch, but how far should i go in getting separate equipment? I'm guessing I need a separate bottling bucket and new racking cane? Separate scrub brush? Bottles? Sours are by far my favorite beer so I would like to primarily brew those once I get some experience under my belt, but the occasional ipa or stout would be nice. Once more question: should fermentation of sours be isolated from other beer? I'm thinking that putting my ipa in the same dark closet where my BW is lurking is asking for trouble. Thanks!

 

[FVillatoro]

I don't brew sours, but look up "Kettle Souring". Basically you mash and let the wort sit for a number of days so that it sours. Then you proceed to boil it and continue the brewing process as normal.
By boiling it you kill the bacteria and therefore keeping it from contaminating your equipment.

 

[microbusbrewery]

I've kind of ranted before about what I consider to be the myth of needing dedicated equipment for sours. I brew quite a few sours, but also lots of clean beers. I really think the idea of dedicated equipment probably originated in order to address the lowest common denominator...the brewer that doesn't clean and sanitize sufficiently. Wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria are all around us...they don't exist only in vials and smack packs of sour beer blends. Unless you store your equipment submerged in vats of sanitizer and only remove them long enough to use them for brewing, they've already been exposed to brett and bugs in your environment. Try leaving out some wort overnight and you'll likely see signs of fermentation in the not too distant future.

All that said, I think there are some pieces of equipment that do make sense to get a second set...for me that means equipment that can't be fully disassembled and/or boiled/steamed, so that's more or less limited to autosiphon, bottling bucket, and bottling wand. Autosiphons have parts you can't take apart...same with bottling wands. Bottling bucket valves can be taken apart, but they are usually made of softish plastic that can't be boiled or scrubbed without damaging the surface.

The rest of my equipment is shared between clean and sour/wild beers and I've never had a problem. For hoses, get silicone; it will pretty much last forever and you can boil after using to transfer a sour/wild beer. Re fermenters, I use a mix of glass carboys, plastic carboys, and a stainless conical. Glass is easy to clean and sanitize. Stainless is easy as well and things like ball valves and racking arms can be boiled to sanitize. As long as plastic is in good shape, it's cleans and sanitizes well; if it's not in good shape, it should be retired regardless of whether or not you brew sours. Bungs can be boiled. For pulling samples, I use a stainless turkey baster that can be boiled to sanitize.

Some things that I do to ensure I don't run into problems, I clean and sanitize equipment before and after each use. This helps prevent any critters from establishing themselves. I also use both iodophor and Star San in my brewery. Often I'll alternate between them, the idea being that if there is a culture that's resistant to one sanitizer, it's not likely to be resistant to both.

 

[jrgtr42]

I wouldn't trust most plastic equipment going back and forth between the two (of course, I don't follow my own advice - I have a keg of a Brett beer I've switched the picnic tab back and forth with regular. I do rinse the tap out with Starsan from a keg of that I keep though, so between that and how little time beer spends in the tap hoses I should be fine.) If you use a plastic fermenter, I wouldn't switch that back and forth between sour and not - if you do, they're cheap enough, have one with airlock and such dedicated for sours. I use a glass carboy for sours - they stay airtight enough for the extended fermentations, and with PBW and Starsan you can sanitize them. Also, I would recommend using dedicated racking hoses and such for sours also.
Anything before the sour bugs go in can do double duty, but post pitching you ideally want separate equipment. And being in the same room will be fine, unless something really blows up. Sour fermentations are much longer and slower, so there isn't a lot of risk of cross contamination from there.

 

[plazola86]

I've only done one sour but went the kettle sour route for fear of infection. I only have a two tap kegerator so I cant dedicate a tap for sours. I mashed like normal, threw my bugs in, they soured the wort overnight and I continued to finish the beer the next day. Boiling and killing the bugs in the process.

 

[corkybstewart]

Way back in the 90's(when access to the internet was very slow and cost $2 per hour) I made a pale ale that sucked so I decided to just open the keg lid and let wild critters turn it into malt vinegar. After 2 years in the keg I bottled almost 4 gallons of delicious malt vinegar from the keg, and then cleaned it like any other keg and put it back into the rotation to be filled with beer(which I've probably done 30 or 40 times since then). Imagine my surprise years later when I learned from the Internet that any beer I put in that keg was doomed forever. I don't recommend turning beer or cider into vinegar in your beer kegs, but it demonstrates that: A-bacteria can be killed with normal cleaning and sanitizing methods, and B-there's a lot of BS and hype on homebrewing forums(really).

 

[toddo97]

Great info--thanks! Yesterday I bought an additional fermenting bucket, autosiphon, and tubing. I was leaning towards another bottling bucket as well. I haven't seen any brushes for cleaning fermenters--just bottle and carboy brushes. Do you all just use normal kitchen brushes for that? And you think it's ok to ferment a sour and a non-sour in the same closet? Thanks again

 

[Jim311]

I like to just use sanitizers but conventional wisdom says that not only must you destroy any brewing gear that touched the sour bugs but you must also burn down your entire house and start over from scratch in another continent. It's the only way to be sure.

 

[JordanKnudson]

Hi all--very new brewer here. I did my first, small, 1 gallon batch three weeks ago and have about 2 weeks left of bottle time before I can see how it turned out. I did a 2.5 gallon BW this past weekend and would like to do a 5 gallon IPA on Saturday (I may be going a little fast with this, but I'm afraid I'm addicted already.....). I've read that once you brew with sours, you pretty much need new equipment for other stuff. I'm going to buy a new 6.5 gallon bucket fermenter for my next batch, but how far should i go in getting separate equipment? I'm guessing I need a separate bottling bucket and new racking cane? Separate scrub brush? Bottles? Sours are by far my favorite beer so I would like to primarily brew those once I get some experience under my belt, but the occasional ipa or stout would be nice. Once more question: should fermentation of sours be isolated from other beer? I'm thinking that putting my ipa in the same dark closet where my BW is lurking is asking for trouble. Thanks!

I have to admit a little confusion about what you said here...
BW = barleywine, I'm assuming? And you're going to make an IPA... Neither of those is a sour style (unless you specifically sour them), yet the end of your post seems to imply that you are worried about cross-contamination between them. That's really not an issue.

With that said, it's not a bad practice to keep any plastic equipment used for sour beers (meaning beers with other organisms such as bacteria or Brettanomyces added) separated from your non-sour equipment. The reasoning is that plastic is porous and can potentially harbor those bugs and introduce them to your next brew, which of course is no good if it's not meant to be soured. This doesn't mean that it is impossible to clean your plastic thoroughly enough, but this practice exists because, well, doesn't it seem silly to knowingly risk future brews when a new bucket and some tubing can be purchased for relatively little money?

Any equipment made of stainless steel or glass can be cleaned, sanitized, and reused for sour or non-sour beers, as these surfaces are not likely to harbor bacteria. Corkybstewart's earlier post seemed to imply that people were fearmongering about kegs being unusable after containing a soured beer (or in his case, vinegar). Now, it is the internet, so I have no doubt that there are people out there who say such things, but since a keg is stainless steel, it does not fall under the umbrella of "equipment that will harbor bacteria beyond a standard proper cleaning." Worst case, if you were really concerned with being safe-rather-than-sorry, you could replace the O-rings, but yeah, there's not much to worry about there.

 

[toddo97]

Sorry--BW=berliner weisse. Thanks for the input--I'll find another closet for the IPA and make sure I have dedicated plastic equipment for sours to be safe

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I'm confused by the responses. It makes sense to me that a kettle sour should be safe since it's soured in the kettle, then boiled. Nothing but your kettle is exposed to the lacto, right? After that, it's just a low pH beer that's no different bug-wise from everything else we brew (I thought).

Is this correct? I ask because my son wants me to brew a berliner weisse for him and the recipes I've seen are just kettle sours. I was assuming this would be risk free for me.

 

[BrewInspector]

Yes, you are correct.
Nothing but the kettle will be exposed as long as you don't put something in the kettle of wort before it is boiled.

 

[corkybstewart]

"Now, it is the internet, so I have no doubt that there are people out there who say such things, but since a keg is stainless steel, it does not fall under the umbrella of "equipment that will harbor bacteria beyond a standard proper cleaning." Worst case, if you were really concerned with being safe-rather-than-sorry, you could replace the O-rings, but yeah, there's not much to worry about there."
That's true, the concern was probably about o-rings and seals but there were people who advocated separate brewing areas for sours back then. But thinking back, very few people brewed sours in the 90's and early 2000's, homebrewed sours are much more common now. I remember going into a homebrew shop around 2004 and asked the owner for some wyeast souring blends, he just glared at me and asked why anybody would want to turn good beer sour.