Spontaneous Fermentation

[johnno]

I was reading with interest about the "Lambic" style beers that expose the wort to the air to be fermented by wild yeasts.
I was just wondering how this would go down in Oz. Not that I'm willing to try it. But hey if the wild yeast is good enough in Belgium why cant it be good enough here.
Maybe one day someone will find a way to do it over here.
Then we can sell beer back to the monks at outrages prices.

cheers

 

[Stratis]

I was reading with interest about the "Lambic" style beers that expose the wort to the air to be fermented by wild yeasts.
I was just wondering how this would go down in Oz. Not that I'm willing to try it. But hey if the wild yeast is good enough in Belgium why cant it be good enough here.
Maybe one day someone will find a way to do it over here.
Then we can sell beer back to the monks at outrages prices.

cheers

I recall a few yanks in rec.crafts.brewing who tried it and failed.

You *might* live in an area with lots of airborne wild yeast which would produce drinkable beer but it's very unlikely. Chances are some bacteria or unwelcome wild yeast will infect it.

I suppose you could experiment with a small batch. Probably not worth it though.

 

[Justin]

I read that a lot of the Lambic breweries rely on "wild" yeast that are rife in the brewery, so it is not such a random process as one would first think. So this takes a bit of the randomness out of it and allows for reproducibility and consistency. I read about a brewery that moved to a new building and couldn't get the beer fermenting properly and consistently, it turned out that the roof in the old brewery was chock full of yeast spores from years and years of brewing and it was this strain that was dropping into the wort to start fermentation. The brewery moved back.

JD

 

[Wax]

Interesting stuff JD. Maybe in a few years my garage will be suitable for Lambic style brewing.

 

[Batz]

Don't know if any of you guys watch "Global Village" on SBS
The other night they were in Puru , the beer this guy was drinking he say was OK , it's served at most small food outlets (the ones the locals use)
Well he discovered later to make it ferement (woman brew all the beer here) they chew corn and spit it into the wort
YUM !!
Recond some nasties are a work in that ! :blink: :blink:

 

[Batz]

Peru !!
or Phew ! h34r:

 

[johnno]

hehe yeah Wax, by the sounds of it maybe in a few years there will be garages all over Oz churning out "garage Lambic".

Batz,
i remember reading over that part about 6 times in one of Papazians books i read a while ago.For some reason it would just not register. but hey what the heck if ya gotta brew you gotta brew :lol: :lol:

cheers

 

[Jovial_Monk]

I exposed some boiled & cooled DME solution in a pie dish just inside the open kitchen window. In 24 hours a very slight yeast cake was visible, tranferring this to an erlenmeyer flask and stepping it up, the wild yeast smelled very nice and clean, then I forgot about it and ended up throwing it away.

So you can capture & culture wild yeast: I would build up a starter, pitch into a small batch of wort, crop the krausen, culture up & pitch into small batch of wort. . .by doing this a number of times I reckon would have fairly high yeast/low bacteria.

Lambics are made in the pajottenland part of Belgium where there is a paricular wild yeast in the air: boiling hot wort is wun into wide shallow coolships (the old way to cool wort) then louvres in the wall by the coolships are opened so the night air and wild yeast have a chance to infect the wort.

the initial ferment is more or less a standard ale ferment, then the bacteria etc are introduced to the beer.

Read the Beer Style Series book on Lambics: the progression of organisms in the beer has to be in the right order. I decided it was way to complex, pLambics are a few years off for me, if ever. WYeast has the Roedelare culture that does a lot of the work for you, but I want to know what is suposed to be happening and when.

A make believe Lambic/lactic sourness: mash 200g acidulated malt, that I think is enough to sour the beer.


Jovial Monk