brewing with brett

i guess that depends on if you want brett in any beer you put in those fermenters

 

are they plastic? if you are using glass and or ss then you should be able to clean then and not worry to much. if its plastic i would buy new fermenters. either way you go, most people have dedicated fermenters for sour/funky, buggs and brett beers.

 

That seems like a good route, i have dedicated plastic buckets for all my sours, i will be upgrading to better bottles for everything soon though.

 

Dedicated raking cane and tubing, dedicated bottle wand also, pretty much anything plastic

 

The general consensus is that you need separate equipment for Brett. I have a couple dedicated fermenters for this kind of stuff, but I swear I've used the same siphon for everything and never developed any infections.

 

I don't have separate anything and have yet to have Brett infect anything (been doing it for a few months. I do keep StarSan in the hoses for a few hours after racking though.

I don't understand the idea that Brett will magically get into everything any more than "Do I need separate equipment for my Belgian beers that use 3787?". They are both yeasts, brett isn't magically immune to what every other yeast finds toxic.

 

You do not need to have separate buckets (or carboys or whatever) for brewing Brett beers. Normal conscientious sanitation will clean out the Brett.

I sent an e-mail to Michael Tonsmiere (BA: Old SocK) a few years ago asking this. His advice was to not reuse the plastic hosing between batches.

As an aside, there is a lot of good information on Michael’s blog of TheMadFermentationist. For example: http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2008/06/all-about-brettanomyces.html

Cheers!

 

I think the issue is more that a small amount of brett getting into another beer will be more of a problem than a small amount of traditional brewer's yeast.

Personally, I'm just getting started with using brett and/or bacteria in my beers. I'm sure that I could be pretty thorough about cleaining/sanitizing and I'd be fine, but I'd rather have the peace of mind of just having separate equipment.

 

Brett is either a tenth of hundredth the size on Saccharomyces so it's easier to get into cracks, scratches,etc. It's not a super cell. So far I haven't duplicated anything yet, including my Blichmann bottle filler. The way I look at it is the first signs that I have a problem won't be something that's terrible and the beer shouldn't be ruined. So if some piece of equipment seems off then I'll by the partner piece.

But the thing is I would think that an infected piece of equipment is just that, an infected piece. Sans a wooden barrel, I don't want equipment Brett introduced by accident at any point of the process. If I'm making a 100% non-funky beer I want to control the process.

Also, I keep my canes and hose filled with star-san. I guess it's an old habit from cycling. I found that an empty wet water bottle would turn into a science experiment in no time. So I would keep my bottles full. So I have a kinked hose on each end of my cane. Not sure if that's the best advice, but so far no issues.

 

No need to treat it any different, yeast is yeast.

 

Brett, no dedicated equipment needed...Lacto and/or Pedio, probably.

 

I use all the same equipment. Just sanitize well after the beer is done.

 

The issue I have with this logic is that Saccharomyces strains tend to have very similar optimal conditions. If yoBrett can eat dextrins up to 9 glucose molecules long, lactose, glycosides from hops, sugars from wood, sugars given off by autolysising yeast, live for 30 years in bottled beers, ferment at surprisingly low temperatures, create esters and alcohols in the absence of carbohydrates etc. In a test done by New Belgium Brett made significant flavor contributions with only 100 cells per ml added at bottling (when normal pitching rates for ale yeast are measured in the millions per ml).

I keep separate gear, but it is essentially free because I just use my old clean gear after it is a bit too beat up to use. I overlapped fermentors for awhile, but even that seemed too risky, so now everything is labled and duplicated. Just too much risk otherwise for all the time/effort/money I put into brewing.

 

This is correct. Brett is just a different variety of yeast, whatever sanitizer you use already will clean any brett from your brewing gear. I have been brewing brett beers for 10 years and have never made any attempt to separate my equipment, and I've never had an unintentionally infected beer.
This is another example of wrong conventional wisdom/urban myth being perpetuated on internet forums by people who have no real life experience in what they are talking about.

 

Yeah, but did you read what Old Sock posted above?

“I keep separate gear, but it is essentially free because I just use my old clean gear after it is a bit too beat up to use. I overlapped fermentors for awhile, but even that seemed too risky, so now everything is labled and duplicated. Just too much risk otherwise for all the time/effort/money I put into brewing.”

Based upon the above verbiage, I am beginning to re-think whether it is a good idea to reuse equipment between Brett and non-Brett batches. This is quite a conundrum for me.