spontaneous fermentation

I wouldn't even wait for signs of fermentation, I would leave it exposed for a few hours and then close it up. Traditional lambic breweries leave their wort exposed overnight and then it goes into barrels. I would add the rest of the fruit after primary fermentation is complete.

Good luck, hopefully you end up with beer and not vinegar or worse.

 

I've failed attempting this a couple times with second runnings (couldn't get the fermentation going). If you only have a gallon, could you pour it over a deep cookie sheet and leave it next to an open window over night? Add to a carboy then wait, I dunno, a year or two?

 

I brewed a beer last year w/ only the yeast that lived on the skins of blackberries from my neighbor's backyard. I am going to bottle it this week.

 

Traditional lambic brewers may as well be inoculating their beer.

 

Being traditional means they are not inoculating their beer. E. g. Cantillon steams and scrubs their barrels to prevent anything other than the overnight exposure to the night breezes from affecting their beer. They feel it is essential to maintaining the traditions of their brewing methods.

 

The traditional part is the time in the coolship. The barrels are infected with what makes their beer Cantillon. That and the rest of the building's interior. The barrels are rolled around with square linked chains to remove beerstone. The steam cleaning is done to freshen up the surface and rid it of acetobacter. The Brett, Pedio and Lacto are deep in the wood's pores.

Anderlecht has changed much in the last 112 years, what was once orchards is now a run down urban setting, so the local airborne microbes have changed.

 

Then we have an inconsistency and we need to get them to re-write their self-guided tour booklet because it definitely states that the steam cleaning is to destroy " ...every form of micro-organic life in the wood...." so that "...fermentation depends exclusively on the yeasts collected in the cooling tun..."

Is there some other source I should be looking at? Thanks.

Yes, the changes in that neighborhood have to have been massive.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Brews-Culture-Craftsmanship-Tradition/dp/0937381861

I also have the out of print Lambic book from brewers publications. That one is hard to find and now expensive, but I bought it a long time ago when it was in print.

I have also been to talks on barrels that were given by Peter Bouckaert, Vinnie Cilurzo, and Todd Ashman. They talk of the bugs and critters being very deep in the wood, and are difficult to get out.

When a winery gets brett in the barrels, those are disposed of. Steam cleaners are not that expensive, but if you are going through a lot of barrels that is. Russian River gets their barrels from a local winery.

Cantillon has the machine that tumbles the barrels with square linked chains in them to clean off the beer stone (Peter Bouckaert said Rodenbock shaves the fouder staves after every beer is drained to remove beer stone). The beerstone reduces the amount of O2 that can diffuse through the wood. The steam cleaning will reduce the acetobacter.

 

Thx for the pointers. Bookmarked the first on Amazon and the second will someday show up somewhere at an affordable price. :-)

Still trying to sort out the souce of the inconsistency created by the Cantillon Self-Guided tour book. I suppose it could be a translation difficulty. Who knows, might have to go back to Anderlecht for some on-site investigation....

 

So the cleaning actually might help the transfer of bugs and to make it more consistent?

It's pretty interesting to watch, for about ten seconds.

I'll be back in Sept. If I remember I'll ask.

 

I'd like to add that when I was there in 2002 they had replaced their roof (directly above the coolship on the top floor) and retained a bunch of the terra cotta tiles from the old roof and positioned them around so that the micro-flora living in there wouldn't be lost, and hopefully would seed the new roof tiles. So that alone shows that they believe inoculation isn't coming just from the great outdoors.

 

That gets rid of the layer of beer stone, which then allows the correct amount of O2 to difuse through the wood. So that, in a way, lets the beer be more consistant fill to fill.

The coolship does allow Klokera and Entero bacteria into the wort. This is traditional.

 

Frankly I don't think that anyone really knows what puts the house stamp on Cantillons flavors. IMHO it's not only the bugs but the order/timing in which they work on the mash.

I'm curious, how is Armand addressing this question? Is my baseline correct? He brewed and blended until the thermostat incident. Then he had to only blend from Lambic produced from others.So but now we're drinking Geuze that he did'nt brew any of the Lambic.

I'll assume that he kept his barrels and has been filling then with Lambic from other producers (Boon?). From what I understand is he's converting non-brewing area into the space where he'll start to brew. When he stopped brewing did he dismantle his coolship?

 

Already hinted at-if I leave a car with the keys in the ignition in a run down city area it will be spontaneously stolen.The brewers do everything they can to ensure that the right organisms get to the wort short of actually adding them.Is it spontaneous fermentation?

 

I did some second runnings of a strong wit beer last fall. It worked good. I left a one gallon pot out from 2 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. on a windy day. The temp varied from 45-55 degress that day and night. I just poured the pot into a one gallon glass jug. It came out great except when I topped up the jug with more beer. It seems the only think working was the brett and it got very cidery. I am aging to see what happens.

I do not think you should try this in summer with temps above 65. I think you might be more likely to pick up some nasty bacteria in the air.

 

How do you know it was Brett?

 

I am just guessing, but the fermentation that kicked up because of the new beer was throwing a lot of CO2. Like a fermentation with the regular beer yeast.

Or the cidery flavor might of come from "whatever yeast" chewing on the oak chips I had in there. When I bottled the bear the oak chips were covered in yeast slurry.