Vessel For Conditioning Brett Beers And Other Bugs

[milestron]

Hi everyone - just in the early stages of putting together a recipe for a lambic or something along those lines. This will be my first brew using bugs and I will probably go the route of using one of the belgian yeasts for the primary ferment and then either use some orval dregs or one of the commercial blends and leave for the long haul. I haven't worked out the specifics yet.

My plan is to use a spare cube for the brett phase - is this the normal course of action? I've been following some american blogs but they mostly use the glass carboys so not much guidance there. I figure I can put the cube away and forget about it, and perhaps will just need to burp it every few months as the gravity drops those few last points. Any tips from the masters of sour out there are much appreciated. Cheers guys

 

[manticle]

I use glass for mine. Theoretically plastic, including HDPE will be semi-permeable and the length of time required to age this kind of beer increases the risk.

That said, there are a number of people I know of who suggest that they have aged for 1+ year with no issue.

 

[seamad]

Firstly im no master , absolute novice, last month bottled a beer that was fermented with wlp410, added a starter built up from orval dregs and some dex to a bottling bucket and bottled. Figure if orval do it something like this then ill give it a go. Orval has iirc @5 vol co2, so used heavy glass and some pet bottles.

 

[notung]

I've got a Flanders Red attempt in a little 11L better bottle, which are said to be at least as impermeable as glass. The brew has been there a year + so wondering about brewing a new batch (fermented clean with us05) and bottling the first. Pellicle still hasn't dropped yet though. Must do some reading about how this works... But I'll be keeping the better bottle just for Brett & other funky brews.

Photo from 6 months back.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

you mainly need to be concerrned if you have introduced acetobactor to your beer. If you've used the yeast cultures for flanders reds... then you have. If its just lacto, or just brett, or just. a mix of them, then its not so much of an issue.

Acetobactor needs oxygen to convert alcohol to acetic acid (vinegar) and if you have too much oxygen, you'll end up with more vinegar character in your sour than you'd like. A HDPE cube lets a lot more oxygen through than you probably want if your beer has acetobactor in it. Otherwise... its probably fine.

You'd be better off with glass or some other material that was less permeable to oxygen, but it's gonna be OK anyway.