How many open ferment?

I believe right now its just Allagash. They built this Belgian style open fermentor called a cool-ship.

 

Ones I know of are off the top of my head are Sierra Nevada (only for certain beers), Jolly Pumpkin, Anchor, and Ommegang. A ton of smaller ones do also. Mostly brewpub scale operations.

 

If I recall, Russian river already does or will be? I remember reading they were getting a coolship?

 

You can add Upright to the list. Their open fermenters are in a "positive pressure" room to keep undesirable bugs out, and they have a nice window and mirror system so people can see them.

 

Yup, Arcadia.

 

I think Shipyard's open fermentation, and based on what I remember from footage at Anchor's brewery in some beer documentary or other, they may be open also.

 

A coolship isn't a fermenter, it's a device for cooling wort. As the name implies. You'd be crazy to try fermenting in one as the wort is only inches deep.

 

Saint Somewhere does some stuff in open fermenters...

 

New Glarus for their R&D series if I remember correctly.

 

Learn something cool everyday.

 

This is where the yeast is introduced though, right? What comes next, it goes from the coolship into fermentation vats? Would those be open too? Do they still try to introduce other yeasts as well? The process intrigues me but I'm completely ignorant about it.

 

Here's the description of what comes next at Allagash.

http://www.allagash.com/beer/coolship/

Done basically the same way as they do it at Cantillon.

 

If you're doing spontaneous fermentation, yes, this is where the yeasts and whatever gets into the beer. Otherwise it's just the quickest way to cool wort without any sort of heat exchanger or refrigeration. Even after the introduction of refrigerators in the 19th century, British breweries kept their coolships because a while load of gunk fell out while the wort was in them. Being very shallow, sediment settled more quickly.

In spontaneous fermentation, you can do whatever you want once you've got all the wild loveliness into the wort, open or closed ferment. I don't actually know what lamic breweries do. My guess would be that the big commercial ones like Belle use closed ones.

On a side note, every single brewery I've been to in Franconia open ferments. Even Schneider (not actually in Franconia) open ferments. As does Hydes in Manchester.

 

Yeah - many US brewers, even after Repeal, still used coolships, as well- sort of as "pre-coolers" before the beer went to Baudelot or other types of wort coolers. Ballantine used one and Schaefer was still using one at the brewery now owned by Boston Beer Co. when it was built in the 1970's and Coors (below) claimed they built the only "solid copper" coolship in the world in an ad in the mid-1930's.

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The F & M Schaefer Brewing Co. uses open fermenters at their Brooklyn brewery (and aren't quite so damn fussy as some of these "craft" breweries when it comes to visitors, either).

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Edit- oh, damn, I guess they're closed now, huh? Nevermind.​

 

Troegs has also started doing this with their Dreamweaver

 

NG does it for a variety of their beers, mainly the wheat beers.

 

IIRC, from taking the tour at Ommegang, they couldn't actually have "open" fermentation. The FDA (?) made them put the open fermenter in a closed room for sanitation reasons. Am I misremembering (Ala Roger Clemens), or have these other breweries found a way around the rules?