Lactobacillus and Plastic

[SmellyFingers]

When using lactobacillus in a beer (such as Berliner Weiss), what brewing equipment will the lacto infect, excluding my glass carboy of course? I assume that my blow-off hose will be infected but what about my siphon, bottling bucket and wand? Will a short contact time still be enough for infection?

[ChrisKennedy]

I wouldn't worry about if you are using commercial lacto. It is the biggest wuss bug out there.

[ipaisay]

lacto is already on all of your malt. so, what are your worries? also, Lacto does not like hops, so anything over say 25 IBU's should be fine. I would clean your equipment as you usualy do, or just set your equipment aside for your berliner beers and your "traditional beers" if that makes you happy.

[Mylo]

lacto is already on all of your malt. so, what are your worries? also, Lacto does not like hops, so anything over say 25 IBU's should be fine. I would clean your equipment as you usualy do, or just set your equipment aside for your berliner beers and your "traditional beers" if that makes you happy.

The lacto on your grain is killed in the boil. Some traditional Berlinerweisses are no-boil, consequentally.

To answer the OP's question, I would say that it's best to keep a set of plastic (bottling bucket, wand, hose, spigot, stoppers) just for sours.


Mylo

[brewinhard]

I would definitely keep a second set of plastic everything, just in case. Once you have a second bucket, autosiphon, bottling wand, tubing, etc, you can then brew any type of sour beers (brett, pedio, lacto infected) with no worries.

[dmtaylor]

I ruined a lot of good beer by trying to reuse equipment from my first sour beer. About 50% of my beers using the same equipment ended up sour -- it was impossible to control. So I replaced all my plastics and hoses and haven't had another sour beer since.