Wild yeast management and best practices

[jcsweat]

I'm sure this question has been asked ad nauseum, but I'll ask anyway.

A friend of mine recently gave me three plastic buckets and a bottling bucket which he has used with wild yeast, as well as some bottling equipment. He used Brett, Sacc, etc. They're relatively clean inside but they still smell kind of like sour beers, and there is a little grunge left in them. Just a bit. I've been storing them stacked up with my other non-wild fermenting buckets, in the same closet. Have I made a huge mistake? Is all of my equipment in danger of being infected with wild yeasts? Is the physical contact a death knell for any hope of a normally fermented batch in the future? Can these wild yeasts easily be transferred through the air, tainting anything on which the spores settle?

I'm also fermenting a stout in the same room and on the same night that I moved all of the new buckets into the room, I took a gravity reading on my stout. I left the lid off for at least five minutes. Might something have got into the stout? It's only been a week so I doubt it would be showing any signs so quickly, but I'm worried about it because I noticed that the airlock bubble rate seems to have risen slightly. Obviously I'm not going to dump it out, I'm just looking for some experienced opinions about the matter.

So, how does everyone store their equipment? Do you segregate it? If it smells like brett, does it mean it's still dirty enough to spread the bug around?

thanks everybody...

 

[monkeybox]

The wild forum might be a better place for this question, but as a regular lurker there, most of them will tell you that it's no big deal to have wild equipment and standard equipment in the same area, or even touching.

Most will tell you that you should keep your soft plastics (tubing, etc) separate, but that your hard plastics (such as fermenters) and glass are fine. Others will give anecdotal evidence that they've never bothered and everything's fine.

I'd say RDWHAHB.

 

[jcsweat]

Thanks, I was hoping someone would say that. I'll take a gravity reading next week and the week after; that'll make it three weeks in the primary. Hopefully it will not have changed. Another part of the reason I'm worried is because when I was checking the gravity, it had already reached expected FG. So I wouldn't think it would be bubbling as much as it has. I hope it hasn't fallen too much more.

Does the process of conditioning also create CO2?

I did also post this in the wild forum, but that was hours ago and nobody has replied, whereas I posted this here only minutes ago and I already have a response I posted this here because of the higher number of users.