Spontaneous Fermentation
These beers are brewed primarily around Brussels, Belgium. They are fermented in oak barrels after being inoculated with wild yeast and bacteria while cooling in a Koelship. Wild yeast and bacteria ferment the wort in the oak barrels. The beers fermented from yeast and bacteria in the Brussels area are called Lambic beers. These bacteria add a sour flavour to the beer. Of the many styles of beer very few use bacteria, most are fermented with yeast alone and bacterial contamination is avoided. However, with the advent of yeast banks and the National Collection of Yeast Cultures, brewing these beers – albeit not through spontaneous fermentation – is possible anywhere. Specific bacteria cultures are also available to reproduce certain styles.
Brettanomyces is a genus of yeast important in brewing lambic, a beer produced not by the deliberate addition of brewer's yeasts, but by spontaneous fermentation with wild yeasts and bacteria.
Read more about this topic: Brewing, Fermenting, Fermentation Methods
Famous quotes containing the words spontaneous and/or fermentation:
“Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Two principles, according to the Settembrinian cosmogony, were in perpetual conflict for possession of the world: force and justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge; the law of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation issuing in progress. One might call the first the Asiatic, the second the European principle.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)