First sour - blowoff in one of my ferm chambers

[MapleGroveAleworks]

Hi all - brewed my first ever sour last week. A Flanders Red with Roselare 3763.

I have 2 ferm chambers side by side in my basement, which is also in the same room as my keezer, kegs, other various stuff. I do not brew down there...that's up in the garage. But I do keg etc in the same space as this sour. No open fermenters are ever down there, just fermenting beer. The empty clean fermenters are kept up in the garage. Kegs are always sealed except when kegging.

I fermented this one in a plastic Big Mouth Bubbler. I opened the door of the mini fridge and realized I had a blowoff. It popped the top off the airlock and there's a bit of a mess in the fridge. Not horrible.

My question is, what steps do I take now to ensure I'm not going to infect the rest of my stuff down there? I'm honestly afraid to even open the door because I assume the blowoff gunk will get airborne everywhere. Hope I didn't make a huge mistake. Also, is that ferm chamber ever able to ferment a non sour again after this mess? Thanks everyone.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Looks like a nice setup!
My advice is to wipe it up just like any other mess and if you're worried about it hit all the surfaces with a spray bottle of your sanitizer solution.

In general you want to keep separate plastic/rubber parts. These organisms aren't great at traveling through the air, so your risk of cross-contamination is pretty minimal as long as new beers don't come into direct contact with plastic or rubber used with live sour beer organisms (a biofilm may be present). A standard blow-off tube or airlock should protect for future brews in that chamber.

Cheers! Hope your beer comes out well!

"Brettanomyces is not considered to be airborne, however studies have found a very small amount of cells in the air at wineries where wine with Brettanomyces in it was being handled[...]. These set of studies also determined that very specific methodology was needed in order capture Brettanomyces from the air, and indicated that the yeast was "stressed".[16]. While it is possible for Brettanomyces to be briefly carried by gusts of air, it only happens in the vicinity where the Brettanomyces beer or wine is being bottled (more so) or is actively fermenting (less so). Good cleaning and sanitation and cold temperatures should be employed to keep Brettanomyces from contaminating other equipment, however flying insects are also a likely cause for contamination of Brettanomyces." - MTF

 

[Dcpcooks]

You can give it a good cleaning and spray the chamber with isopropyl alcohol.

 

[jekeane]

I have fermented side by side brett and sacch in the same chamber on several occasions and there is no issue. When i started playing with brett etc. I took a paper towel sprayed it with star san and rubber banded it over the holes in my airlock because I was nervous. That is about the only extra precaution I take with brett / bugs.

You do have a mess on your hands that you need to clean well. I would clean everything up now and then I would spray your unit down with a bleach cleaner let that sit for a couple minutes clean it up then give it a spray with star san.

 

[MapleGroveAleworks]

Thanks everyone. Yeah it hasn't touched anything besides the inside of the chamber. I'll get to cleaning right away.