Clean and sour beers in one brewery

[Gbbc]

Hi there,

We currently producing only "clean" beers and was wondering if it is possible to produce sour beers and barrel aged beers in the same brewery with the same equipment? We would like to do beers with Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus etc.

From my understanding it is Brettanomyces which is the one that is hard to keep at bay regarding gaskets and pvc? We are fortunate enough to have kegs we could use specifically for sour beers, but I'm concerned cleaning those on our PSS kegwasher (no steam) regarding the Brett. How would we go about serving these beers in our taproom? We could dedicate a specific tap for these beers if that is possible.

Any tips from people doing this with success will be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

[aaron inkrott]

We occasionally do brett beers in the same fermenters as our clean beers. To be on the safe side, using separate valves, gaskets, hoses, etc....is the best way. Also helps ease the mind and sleep better. Follow a strict protocol once the tank is emptied. Prior to having separate fittings, we'd run caustic on the tank, then place all fittings in our autoclave. You can use a pressure cooker if you don't have an autoclave. We also use an ATP meter post caustic to confirm there are no spoiling organisms. Hope this helps.

[Gbbc]

We occasionally do brett beers in the same fermenters as our clean beers. To be on the safe side, using separate valves, gaskets, hoses, etc....is the best way. Also helps ease the mind and sleep better. Follow a strict protocol once the tank is emptied. Prior to having separate fittings, we'd run caustic on the tank, then place all fittings in our autoclave. You can use a pressure cooker if you don't have an autoclave. We also use an ATP meter post caustic to confirm there are no spoiling organisms. Hope this helps.

Thank you Aaron

[porter]

It's not the brett

It's not the Brett that keeps me up at night- it's the lacto and pedio.

Brett cells are large and although heartier, is a yeast and is killed just as easily as brewers yeast with cleaning by normal CIP procedures. The bacteria is much smaller and can prove to be much harder to eradicate.

When large breweries have infection problems it's almost always lactic acid bacteria- a la New Belgium among others.

I would keep Lacto and Pedio out of your normal fermentors if possible. That said, you should be able to clean high quality stainless tanks and parts and going the extra step to use separate soft parts or sterilizing the removables is a good option.

And learning from breweries who do clean and sour barrel aged beers- if you intend to bottle bourbon barrel aged stuff that will be hoarded and kept for years by your customers, DO NOT share any of that equipment with your sour beers. You WILL have problems eventually.

One more thing- separate your activities or personnel whenever possible. I.E. don't do any cellar work after handling even one dram of sour beer or using "buggy" equipment. We make sure to save any buggy work for late in the day after all "clean" yeast pitching, etc. and brewing is done and usually have different people handling those tasks. The buggy guy isn't even allowed to walk through the cellar.
And I always ask that boots are washed at the end of a buggy day and that everyone showers and changes their clothes for work the next day.

[Gatamo]

Not an easy answer to that question

They say barrel souring and spontaneous fermentation has its origin in the french speaking part of Europe, Belgium to be more precise. Allegedly it was the result of bad or no sanitation and the absence of hygiene in the production process. To have , what you describe as, " clean" beer together in one facility with "infected" beer is not a good idea. No matter what you do, and no matter how careful you will go about it, one day it will cross contaminate and then you will be having a mighty problem. In my line of work i see this several times in a year, and not in craft breweries but in rather large commercial breweries that have educated brewers and brew masters and all checks in place. And still, it happens.

[Junkyard]

isn't it inevitable that a brewery making only clean beers will acquire an infection too, after all, the Belgian Brewers that became known for their sour beers acquired those bugs from the world around them, perhaps the lactobacillus came from grain, grain just like every brewery uses ... My point is, bugs are everywhere.. You might be at a slightly larger risk brewing sour beers in the same facility, but if your brewery has a truly proficient Sanitation regimen, you should be fine. The organisms that make beer sour and funky are killed just as easily as Brewers yeast.

[finecreek]

"They say barrel souring and spontaneous fermentation has its origin in the french speaking part of Europe, Belgium to be more precise. Allegedly it was the result of bad or no sanitation and the absence of hygiene in the production process."

This would explain lots of other beer styles in the past souring when not being drunk fresh, but your assertion that it's just bad hygiene is not true. Beers originally made from wort cooled in a coolship were perhaps not meant to be inoculated, just cooled in this method but it's pretty much known that in Belgium, (where most people speak Flemish) a coolship is used specifically to inoculate the wort with wild microbes, while the rest of the process is very controlled and surprisingly sanitary to keep bad microbes at bay.

I agree with other posters though that you can simultaneously run a sour program in a clean brewery, but you have to be very diligent in cleanliness, and even then expect that sooner or later you might have an infection that you need to nip in the bud.

[Gatamo]

Finecreek

I have worked with a "Kuehlschiff" and a "Rieselkuehler" and our aim back then was not to get the wort infected. During my 3 years apprenticeship in a 2 million hl brewery in germany, all apprentices had to go through brewing as it was done a hundred years ago. In our apprentice brewery we had direct firing, we cut ice in the lake for the summer, we had wooden barrels and made our malt in a "Tennenmaelzerei". After University and 35 years as a master brewer I believe I know what I am talking about. It was the hygiene that was leading to barrel souring and the brett fermentation. But they have now, with the help of science, developed it in to an art which will not easy be copied.

[gitchegumee]

Maybe most places....

Cantillion outside of Brussels intentionally infects their beers with a coolship, shallow open inoculation pool, and an open cupola. They claim that the resident spiders have something to do with it too. This done without the help of much science to this day. Is this bad hygiene? Not in my book: if this "non-sanitary" practice is what is required to get the sublime flavors into a beverage over time, then it is genius.

[finecreek]

Gatamo

I'm not asserting that you don't know what you're talking about, as all beers were at one point cooled with coolships but in the context of mixed fermentations, coolships can be used to innoculate wort with local microflora in conjunction with what may be in (but not necessarily relying on) the barrels. In most of these places, the room the coolship is located in is kept dusty and uncleaned so as not to remove the microflora that has become part of the room. In your experience with a coolship, was there alot of thought put into cleaning the room in which it was housed? I'm not experienced with coolships for "non-spontaneous" beers myself but it would be interesting to see the difference in practices between the two, as well as the difference once you add a pitch of Sacharromyces to see if the big divergence is with the pitched yeast out competing any other microbes.

As for the barrels themselves, Lambic breweries like Cantillon scour the insides of their barrels and wash with hot water, not that this would totally remove any bugs or wild yeast, but the goal is to minimize the barrel's contribution to fermentation.

[StackBrewer]

Knock on wood

We decided to keep everything separate from our clean stuff. Clean beer (sometimes soured pre-boil) meets inoculated barrels after regular fermentation. We have a small blending/priming tank (sours only) and everything is transferred/sampled/packaged with dedicated sour equipment including bottles. I haven't kegged anything from the program yet, but I'd mark the keg and clean it manually or possibly consider one of those disposable plastic kegs. Better safe (as possible) than sorry!