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Some brewers (including homebrewers and professional brewers) do not find it necessary to move the mostly attenuated beer into a secondary vessel. Instead, the mixed culture is pitched directly into the primary fermenter. While yeast autolysis is a concern in regular brewing, it is not a cause for concern in mixed fermentations that contain ''Brettanomyces''. Lambic brewers, for example, perform a primary fermentation in barrels and leave the beer in the barrels during the beer's entire aging process, which is usually 1-3 years <ref>[http://www.lambic.info/Brewing_Lambic#Barrels Lambic.info Wiki. Brewing Lambic. Retrieved 6/8/2015.]</ref>. Yeast autolysis releases trehelose, acids, and other compounds, which are metabolized by ''Brettanomyces'' <ref>[http://www.mbaa.com/districts/michigan/events/Documents/2011_01_14BrettanomycesBrewing.pdf Brettanomyces in Brewing the horse the goat and the barnyard. Chad Yakobson. 1/14/2011.]</ref>. Maintaining a [[Solera]] may be an exception to this (see the [[Solera]] page for details). The advantage of not moving the beer into a secondary vessel is that less overall oxygen is introduced into the beer (oxygen exposure will contribute to more acetic acid and then ethyl acetate production), and might be the best option if the brewer does not have a closed/CO2 system to prevent exposure to oxygen during transferring. Some [[Brettanomyces#Nitrogen_Metabolism|evidence suggests]] that the nutrients released by yeast autolysis are beneficial to ''Brettanomyces'', so leaving the beer on the yeast cake might even be more desirable than not.
Co-pitching all of the microbes to begin with, including the primary ''Saccharomyces'' culture, can produce different results than staggering the pitches of individual species over time. For example, many brewers pitch a single mixed culture that contains ale yeast, ''Brettanomyces'', and lactic acid bacteria. Other brewers, such as Vinnie Cilurzo at Russian River, prefer to pitch their ale yeast first, and then pitch ''Brettanomyces'' and/or lactic acid bacteria after the primary fermentation <ref>Tonsmeire, Michael. "American Sour Beers: InnovativeTechniques for Mixed Fermentations". Brewers Publications. 2014. Pgs 100-101.</ref>. See this [http://brulosophy.com/2018/05/14/mixed-fermentation-combined-vs-staggered-microbe-pitch-exbeeriment-results/ Brulosophy experiment comparing co-pitching versus staggered pitching]. Note (note that oxygen exposure during the staggered pitch and other variables in this experiment could account for some of the differences between the two beers ) <ref>[https://www.facebook.com/groups/MilkTheFunk/permalink/2093241697370700/?comment_id=2093637253997811&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%22%7D Dan Pixley and Zach Taggart. Milk The Funk Facebook thread on the "MIXED FERMENTATION: COMBINED VS. STAGGERED MICROBE PITCH" blog post. 05/14/2018.]</ref>.
====Aging====