Going to be bottling some wild ale soon and have a mixed brett culture that was used during conditioning in the keg for a few months. As brewers do with wild oak barrels, I am thinking about NOT cleaning or rinsing the keg between batches in order to innoculate the next batch with the mixed culture. Basically to time the bottling of the one wild ale batch with the transfer in of a new batch of beer in. Everything would be done under anaerobic conditions btw. Anyone do this or have any concerns regarding this?
Should probably work okay. Main concern would be that with oak, you're actually working with a porous surface that gives yeast and bacteria a place to cling on to. With the keg method you're mainly relying on places in the keg that are not easy to clean (unions, water scale, etc) as your safe spot for the culture. Also, there may be a build up of less than healthy cells at the bottom of the keg where the dip tube can't completely evacuate the keg that would lead to some autolyzed yeast character after a couple batches.
This just happened to me by accident. Brewed 10 gallon split batch NE session ipa with 25% flaked oats. 5 gallons with Saf04 and the other with 05. Didn't love it so it went slow. About the four months that mark when I went back to it one keg wa cleary now a delicious Brett pale ale! The cool thing is that the 25% oats have given the 4.8% brett beer a huge body. Brett tends to thin a beer out but not this one! It's drinking awesome right now six months in the keg! Bright pineapple notes with some funk. I must not have cleaned the keg well enough after kegging an Alalgamation Brett Saison.... Great mistake.
You can always add a bottle of the wild ale to the fresh keg. That will inoculate the keg and avoids the transfer of trub, hops and other detritus. Cheers.
