Beer Forum

So I'm officially experimenting in the sours now and I have a few questions regarding how much sanitizing I need after performing a sour mash. I mashed in at 158 and then allowed it to cool down to 120. At this point I added 6oz of acidulated malt to introduce extra lacto and then let it set in my round cooler mash tun in a temperature controlled room for 3 days while it soured. I then mashed out and sparged as normal. I followed this with a 40min boil and cooling/fermenting with alt yeast. I sanitized the mash tun with a light bleach mixture followed by starsan. Because nothing else touched the wort until after boil, do I need to worry about this lacto infecting other things? For example, do I have to worry about my keg or tap lines being infected with lacto if it was boiled after souring?

Thanks for the Help,

AM

I'd venture to say that the bleach and starsan likely weren't even strictly necessary. A good rinse with hot water to remove any remaining sugars or grain bits will ensure that any remaining bacteria have nothing to feed on and won't funkify your tun (which could carry flavors into your next beer). Any future mashes will only be in there a short time, and then you'll be boiling it.

You will be just fine after the boil as you have killed any lacto or other aerobic bugs brought in during the sour mash. As spider said you probably wouldn't even need to have bleached/starsanned your mash tun either simply b/c your grains will be sitting at high temps during the mash for a very short period (60-90 min) and then boiled. This is not enough time for any flavor impact from any souring agents to take hold in your wort before boiling.

Awesome! Thanks for the input.

Yep just as mentioned before boiling killed everything. Bugs are in every single mash even if you don't add them, so don't worry about a sour beer ruining your brewery. The fear of bugs is highly overated.

BrewerJ wrote:Yep just as mentioned before boiling killed everything. Bugs are in every single mash even if you don't add them, so don't worry about a sour beer ruining your brewery. The fear of bugs is highly overated.

This^^^^

Just clean your mash tun as you normally would. You only have to worry about the "bugs" on the cold side of the process contaminating your "normal" beers.