Morning all,
I’ve been getting into sours over the past year and have even accidentally made one with my club several months ago. Long story short – 12 brewers brewed the same batch of a wee heavy and we put in in a bourbon barrel for 6 months to age. The final product was clearly effected by someone’s mishaps and the entire barrel turned sour. The original characteristics of the wee heavy are there to a degree, just with a bit of a sour punch on the palate. One could draw comparisons to Duchess de Bougourne. Anyhow, I have this beer kegged and ready to serve. What is everyone’s regiment in dealing with kegs/ tubing/ etc that come in contact with sours.
Thanks,
Dave
I don’t keg, but I share fermenters between sours and clean beers. No issues so far. My rule of thumb is that any hard materials can be shared, as long as you are diligent with sanitation, but any soft materials need to be isolated. An auto-siphon is a PITA to clean, so I would never try to use the same one to rack a clean beer if it ever touched a sour. Keep in mind that we use Star-San to kill wild yeast and bacteria. Brett, lacto, and pedio are… wild yeast and bacteria. It will kill them.
As far as this applies to kegging, I don’t have direct experience, but I would expect your keg would be fine, but any of the lines, fittings, etc. should be replaced or used just for sours. As for taps and faucets… I guess that depends on how easy it is to disassemble and clean/sanitize thoroughly. :cheers:
Yeah I figured. Will probably stick to glass for the sours and buckets for everything else. Bottling is a great idea versus kegging. I do have a beer gun so that would solve my carbonation concerns.
