Sour beer, bugs and paranoia ?

[Swift Pint]

I've just brewed my first sour. Its based loosely on a recipe for the Duchess de Bourgogne & the only yeast I added was from the dregs of a bottle of Cantillon Lambic.

I've read a lot of stuff online about brewing sour beers, and there seems to be a massive amount of worry about cross contamination.
Lots of people seem to have different fermentors, bungs, kegs etc for their sour beers because they are worried about future brews becoming infected. I even read about one guy who brewed all of his sours at his in-laws to avoid any cross contamination with his regular brews, it all seems a bit OTT

Are people paranoid, or is it a genuine concern? :wha:

Most people cite the risk of these bugs (brett, lacto, pedio etc) comes from them:
a) being airborn,
b) living deep in the nooks and crannies,
c) being super hard, if not impossible, to kill
(I made the last one up, but it certainly seems to be inferred in places.)

The way I see it is theres loads of wild yeast and bacteria floating around everywhere and that good cleaning and sterlising of equipment should be sufficient.

What do people reckon? Having seperate kit for fermenting sours sounds like more hassle than just giving it all a good once over when its been used for sour beers.

 

[phettebs]

I've done a couple beers using Brett and the only thing I swapped out was my autosiphon and hose. I continued to use the same FV and glass carboy with no problems. I used StarSan like I always do and nothing differently. No problems at all.

Baz

 

[disgruntledgoat]

I've brewed Lambics and an orval clone on the same equipment as everything else and never had a problem. I think the superstition comes from the days of wooden barrels in real breweries which were a bitch to clean. Plastic, metal and glass? Not so much.

 

[richc]

I've brewed a couple of sour/brett beers and just used my normal equipment. OK, for the ones that need a year plus of fermentation I've used the scratched old plastic fermenters I would have needed replace anyway.

 

[Swift Pint]

Good stuff, that's reassuring to know. Its going to be sat fermenting for ages, but I'll make sure I give everything a really good clean and sanitise afterwards.

This waiting game is a bit frustrating... :whistle: