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You are here: Home --> Forum Home --> Brewing Forum --> Brewing Discussion --> Using Wood to Maintain Mixed Culture

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chino_brews
Charter Member
Eden Prairie, MN
301 Posts


Lambic and other sour brewers  maintain a mixed culture in their barrels. I would like to solicit input on how I could do this at home in a pet carboy or HDPE bucket using chunks of wood in the beer, which  I would then transfer from beer to beer. 

Any thoughts? What type of wood would be best to use? OK spirals? Oak cubes? A piece of chair leg? 

Thanks in advance for your input!




Posted 34 days ago.

Matt
Charter Member
Normal, IL
341 Posts


I do this! I'll snap a picture when I'm home, I call it my sour stick. 

Basically, it's a used Honeycomb meant for a five gallon batch. After using it once in the keg, I boiled the shit out of it, and now just transfer it between sour batches, which I typically only have one going at a time.

Personally, I'm using Oak but I don't think it'll make too much of a difference since I boiled mine to remove character from it anyways. I do like that the honeycombs have the holes drilled into them to increase the surface area, more space for the yeast to gather.




Posted 34 days ago.

KidMoxie
Charter Member
San Elijo Hills, CA
405 Posts


My club just uses oak cubes that we transfer from batch to batch. You can generally use whatever wood thing you would normally want to put in your beer.




Posted 34 days ago.

mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts


> use whatever wood thing you would normally want to put in your beer

Prevert!





Posted 34 days ago.

KidMoxie
Charter Member
San Elijo Hills, CA
405 Posts


Gives new meaning to "house culture."




Posted 34 days ago.

mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts


Prevert (tm)

A medicine specifically designed to prevent you from putting your junk in a buddy’s beer.

Side Effects: Desire to move to Wisconsin. Acne and jock itch. If you have large hemorrhoids for more than 14 days, it is not our damned fault.





Posted 34 days ago.

Necropaw
Charter Member
Central WI
608 Posts


Alcoholism is actually the one that gives a desire to move to WI.




Posted 34 days ago.

chino_brews
Charter Member
Eden Prairie, MN
301 Posts


I should have known when I used the word "wood" that I would get a bunch of "helpful" responses. Sigh. 



Posted 34 days ago.

mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts



That seems like a good idea. I would imagine some form of that in wood would work just fine. Dunno about LAB, but the yeast would survive drying.

Sorry for the derail Chino :)





Posted 34 days ago.

mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts


…AND I want one of those giant copper kettles for bochet honey! That would be so awesome!





Posted 34 days ago.

brouwerijchugach
Charter Member
Anchorage, AK
59 Posts


I'd use cubes just because I think they're super easy to move around, weight out, etc. I have no experience with the spirals. Not to derail, but for what its worth I do not recommend using buckets for long term sour aging. I have not had good experience with them for more than a few months of aging at a time (and I don't use them at all now.)




Posted 34 days ago.

DanABA
Las Vegas
25 Posts


A facebook friend of mine who goes only by the name "Eccentric Beekeeper" uses spirals a lot to preserve his cultures.  It definitely works.  Personally though, I prefer to have a healthy population of bugs to pitch, so this wouldn't be my preferred way to store them.  It does work though, and you could always use the spirals to create a starter first.  And it does have a high level of convenience over other methods.  



Posted 34 days ago.

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