Any spontaneous fermenters out there?

I wish I could, I live in the city so I would definitely not want to open ferment here (does smog have yeast in it?).

 

yeah i'd like to hear others input on what i'm in store for.

 

I'll bet you could do it. I'm pretty sure even smoggy air has yeast in it.

There are people all over the country who do sourdough bread using the traditional method of spontaneously fermenting a starter batter of flour and water. They have a lot of websites and blogs on this (I know because I decided to give it try) with all sorts of tips and caveats, and I've never seen anyone post about being unable to get a starter going because of their location.

 

I think it is great that some of you are doing it. Having said that, I personally wouldn't. Too much risk of negative results when you can get the same (or very similar) set of bugs in a controlled way using commercial products from Wyeast and WL. I'm all for science experiments, but my time is pretty limited so I like to insure I'm always brewing something that will be drinkable in the end. But again, I think it's great some of you are willing to experiment with spontaneous fermentations and love to read about it.

 

I did this with my Lambic last year. Took nearly a week for fermentation to kick off and I even pitched some of the Lambic cake from the previous year's Lambic as well as the dregs from a 3F Oud Geueze. It takes awhile, and the beer seems to progress much slower (not as sour as the previous Lambic which received a starter made from blackberries), but seems to be coming along. I bottled the previous year's version at one year, this one is past that mark and no where near ready. It has a different acid from the early bugs (non lactic, acetic, citric).

You can read a little more here and here and here.

 

I've got several of the commercial blends going as well (roeselare, WY lambic blend, ECY) but like the idea of trying to get a local flavor going and trying something different. If it doesn't turn out good on it's own it'll atleast add some sort of complexity in a blend some day

 

Late this summer I put 2 gallons if wort in an organic strawberry field near our house.
Overnight, 58 degrees, with cheesecloth cover. In 3 days had active fermentation, in 3 weeks moved to secondary.
That batch cleared nicely and has no off putting flavors, it is a touch sour, and has a fine nose.
I made a full 5.5 gallons batch same day as the move, and pitched on that yeast cake.
Much slower on the uptake, 5 weeks, primary and still in secondary. Bottling this weekend.
So we will see.

Cheers

 

not exactly a lambic or spontaneous - but definitely wild/uncontrolled - i did this over the summer -

http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/wild-homebrew-demo.97173/

brewed two batches this way. one is very brett tasting, one is fairly sour smelling (not vinegar though - although i havent sampled yet).

i plan to age them ~ one year, blend them, and bottle them potentially next summer.

i definitely plan on doing this again.

 

I've been experimenting with breadmaking recently, and made a spontaneous sourdough starter. I am now up to my 3rd loaf (and tastes much better than the commercial offerings, if I do say so myself).

My bread success has made me slightly less aprehensive in trying a spontaneous beer, so I might give it a go once my "sour fermentor" is empty.

 

And do you HAVE to drink it after 5PM like mowing the grass and filling up the gas tank on a summer day?

 

Everything I've read in this regard indicates that if you sterilize your ingredients prior to trying to letting the starter go, it fails more often than not. It seems to be the residual bugs left in the flour that causes it to become sourdough.

 

Earlier this year, I did 5 gallons of extract wort (Piatz method) and left it sequentially outside, then in the kitchen, then in the basement for a total of 24 hours. I did chicken out at the last minute and add Lambic dregs when I put it into the fermentor. I haven't touched it in about 8 months, though did picl a bunch of blackberries to split the batch onto when the time is right. Seattlambic.

 

Brewed the first of many (hopefully) wild gruits a few weeks ago. Used yarrow, mugwort, and sage instead of hops. distributed the wort into my 2 kettles for extra surface volume and let it sit overnight before collecting. Had active fermentation in 2 days, still need to try it. Will probably be blending batches as they are ready, adding fruit, oak, etc

 

I don't know much about capturing wild yeast, so this may be a dumb question. But why use a lid at all when you want yeast/bugs to fall in?

 

i was supposed to do a full-out lambic this month, but life is too busy and i wasn't fully prepared to do it.
i'm doing a quasi-lambic of sorts: i left out samples 1 hr outside of my city and picked them up the following day.
all have resulted in growth. it is now month 6 of the samples growing and being built up close to 1 litre. i am going to brew 5 gallons of lambic-recipe beer (but I will probably just do an extended boil versus the traditional lambic mash) and add it to each of those starters. i'll probably add a bit of sacch to it, since, after 6 months, i assume that any natural sacch may be gone. i have around 6 samples from different properties, so it will be neat to see how each of those (around 1 gallon each) will ferment over a year.

 

Sterilize your ingredients? I don't understand. Your only ingredients are flour and water. If you sterilize the flour (how?) I don't understand how there would be "residual bugs."

 

I would also like to add that I didn't want any of the mice/rats/birds/bats poop in the virgin wort. The apples held the lid up about 2 inches off the kettle so there was plenty of airflow going across it and we saw a few bugs in the wort when we drained it. So it seemed to work well for us.