The spontaneous approach harks back to the way beer may have been discovered or how beer was a common beverage made at home, way way way way way back in the day. Cheers!
Indeed - it is how all beer was made for the first few millennia of beer being around and we didn't discover what yeast was until the 1800s! We thought it beer's alcoholic effects were a gift from god.
Overall, another well-done video! Minor detail: ~1:23 - When discussing the first beer you said, "low acidity" when I think you meant to say either "lower pH" or "higher acidity."
One thing that is really important about the first beer. Lactobacillus is added after boiling & cooling down. It is not really clear in the first part of the video. Another tangent, Berliner Weisse is traditonally made with Brettanomyces just try a Schneeeule. So Berliner Weisse is traditionally a mixed ferm beer ;)
Sorry for any confusion! We didnt go into too much detail there as you can sour before or after the boil - depending on your own process and opinion. Most brewers will sour before boiling, in our experience at least, as they can halt it when they want by starting the boil. They sometimes not a short boil beforehand if adding packaged lacto - to make sure it is free of other microbes.
@@TheCraftBeerChannel I can confirm that souring often happens before the boiling. Reasons for that are different and up to every individual brewer, but some factors are - hops is somewhat antibacterial and might kill the lactobacillus - a lowered pH through pre-boil souring lowers the efficiency of the hop "yield", meaning you have to use more (expensive) hops - a low pH at the same time is beneficial for some enzymes so sometimes brewers even add a little soured wort to the mash already Note that I'm not an expert on that (yet I hope), still wanted to mention those points. Souring in brewing is quite an interesting topic in general.
Fun fact, Bret Hart is from my hometown and you can see his family's original home (which I believe was sold a number of years ago) built on a hillside facing downtown.
Important video, because sour beer is a vaste field of very different brews, and it's hard to categorize and to educate the public. It's also important to know what goes behind making good mixed fermentation beers, and it's hard justifying the prices to an uneducated public...long time in barrels, blending skills, huge amount of knowledge about yeast and bacterias, a yeast lab in the brewery, barrel knowledge...all that contribute to the taste, and price !
I noticed You have an Allagash t-shirt on who have their own coolship for spontaneous fermentation. Visited them last year on a similar pilgrimage to the one you guys had recently and brought back an amazing Resurgam from their coolship program. Very delicious
We went a few weeks back as part of an hour long documentary we are working on! Coming out in a few weeks. Plus an interview with their brewmaster a few weeks later
The Craft Beer Channel loved it there, beautiful place. Portland was great on the whole! Look forward to the doc, I also visited Treehouse and Trillium whilst I was out there
Excellent video, I've really got into sours and mixed/wild fermenting beer. If you haven't visited Little Earth Project you need to! Blackened Sun in Milton Keynes is a newer brewery but all their stuff is Belgian inspired and he has some dead funky yeast skills 😁
We LOVE little earth - we put them in our breweries to watch video in 2017. And we have had some nice beer from blackened sun - looking forward to seeing them hit their stride.
Hahaha fair question. So yes I guess high acidity is right from a flavour point of view, but we were talking pH... which would of course mean low acidity (around 3.2pH)
Better, it’s a seasonal beer they brew in the spring-summer months. I discovered it this year. Their next seasonal for the fall is called “haunted house” a hoppy dark ale. You can check it out on their website
Now i finally know what farmhouse means and it can basically be anything 😅 no wonder i was confused. Also btw do you have any background in micrbiology? You seemed very confident and had few mistakes. Im impressed :)
@@TheCraftBeerChannel The only thing i could put my finger on is that Brettanomyces has changed name to Dekkera bruxenellis but ofcourse 90% of the industry still uses Brettanomyces so you are not to blame for that one.
@@TheCraftBeerChannel Taxonomy reasons mainly, but dont worry it normally takes 10-20 years before it actually gets implemented by the industry. You might just see it in some research or something.
@@MrJameskuzara Not quite - so "sour" is a taste profile, like citrusy or juicy or roasty, while mixed ferm is a process used in lots of different styles of beer. Like the difference between calling something "hoppy" and is an IPA. They aren't always both. So you could call the North Brew and the Boon beers here "sour", but the JK and DLS beers aren't at all sour, their pH isn't far off water.
Usually they are. Although the one in this video is pretty all 3-year lambic, with a touch of young lambic to start bottle refermentation for carbonation. It is why it has such complexity and a higher alcohol content
We try to rinse them whenever possible but most important for us in filming is not breaking the flow of our conversation so we make the best possible video.
You mean what kind of beer are they making? I believe all of them! There's been some kettle sours (Blitz), some "wild/tamed" beers like the Funk IPA, I believe they are building towards a house culture (or maybe a few), and then they have a coolship so will be making spontaneous beers already!
