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Comment by awild | Hacker News Reader

For people interested in the consequences of this diversity, look into lambic/geuze and other spontaneously Fermented beer using coolshipping as part of their inoculation. There is still ongoing and healthy skepticism on the actual source of yeast for these beers, yet they still rely on some sort of expression of the local microflora for their flavors and that is awesome in the literal sense.

Lambic itself is an amazing culture of fermentation and companionship via blending from your own and other brewers stock, I recommend Belgium and the senne Valley to anyone that is adventurous when it comes to beer/wine/cheese

https://www.goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2019/2/15/a-recipe-for-...

https://newschoolbeer.com/home/2020/11/de-garde-brewing-cool...

https://www.goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2017/10/18/dont-call-it...

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Yeast etc. does float about in the air and is even found in siberian ice cores though, so it'd make sense that some ends up in the wort during cooling.

I understand that the lambic breweries re-use the same oak barrels though, but that yeast/bacteria has to come from somewhere first? I would have thought there would be a combination of yeast/bacteria from the coolship cooling combined with that existing in the barrel.

It'd be interesting if a number of breweries across the world made wort to the same recipe, with the same malt etc. and then let cool with their own coolship.

Also http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Lambic and their wiki in general has some great information on sour beers.

http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Spontaneous_Fermentation#Sou... talks a bit about where they may come from.

>I would have thought there would be a combination of yeast/bacteria from the coolship cooling combined with that existing in the barrel.

Yes that is exactly it, they do steam their barrels, but Brett can survive very deep in wood and inoculation rate does not matter at those scales. The mythos of lambic is, that its purely spontaneous from the air, the more nuanced take is, its a mix of the the air, the building and the barrels.

>It'd be interesting if a number of breweries across the world made wort to the same recipe, with the same malt etc. and then let cool with their own coolship.

There are a ton of breweries making beer the way lambic brewers mdo and the beers have huge variance, though they always come back to the same template

I second milk the funk, I am a very active user on the forum and there are very few wikis that I know of that are as well researched and nuanced as milk the funk. Dan does an amazing job!

Ah that's very interesting re. brett surviving very deep into the wood.

You mean lots of breweries outside of Belgium do a turbid mash and use aged hops too? I'd not realised that. I started reading 'American Sour Beers: Innovative Techniques for Mixed Fermentations' but need to get round to finishing that to understand more about how sour beer is made elsewhere too.

ASB is very thorough but had age a bit by now. 100% Brett and LAB fermentation is impossible for the latter and was a contamination, and not very viable for the former but made viable by bad qc at some of the big yeast labs.

This is more of a "there's literally dozens of us" kind of situation, but the US has a few producers that pay a lot of respect for lambic/geuze they sell their beer under the label of Methode traditionelle. Black project, jester King, American solera, de garde, beachwood blender, allagash, and that's really just off the top of my head. The UK has Mills, kemker Kultuuuuur of Germany has done it a few times. Antidoot Belgium also as far as I know. A recent issue of craft beer and brewing had a recent issue on Spons that was very exhaustive.

Cheers, will look out for those breweries.

I captured, isolated, and built up wild saccharomyces yeast from my suburban backyard last Sept and have been brewing with it regularly since. Currently have batch 4 and 5 on tap. If lambic producers can coolship in the middle of a major European city, you've likely got the fun stuff in your backyard as well.

Maybe a dumb question, but does this mean the whole thing about SF having the best sourdough because of its water is/could be true?

maybe water. The sourdough culture itself likely shifts, changes, and evolve continued re-use.

The water would probably more affect the flavor due to hardness and mineral composition favoring certain microbes over others and the expression of acids etc

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