The Bar Towel

Not sure if any of you were following on Twitter, but this is a huge first in Ontario.
Looks like the 4 brewers pulled in a few really long days/nights and brewed a superbatch at Indie Alehouse. It was then transfered to kegs that were driven to Niagara, placed in "coolships" on Good Earth's property, and (hopefully) innoculated with wild yeast to allow spontaneous fermentation.
I'm guessing we'll know the true results in 6-12 months.

This is an awesome first for Ontario and hopefully the proof that we can do wild fermentations in areas like Wine Country.

I saw the pics on Sawdust's FB page. I've been waiting for Canadian brewers to give this a go for a while now and the Niagara region seems like the natural place to experiment with this. I go through ridiculous lengths to get my hands on any and all the sour and wild ales I can, so to say I am excited about this is an understatement. Spontaneous fermentation is always a crapshoot, but I hope they are wildly successful, no pun intended.

this is awesome!! super excited for this one

there's lots going on that makes me really excited.
i've only been homebrewing for a year, and I've toyed with the idea of finding a way to do a lambic in Niagara. its great that these guys have somehow managed to find a way to do it.

first, finding landspace to borrow for the coolship is difficult. great to see Good Earth leased/donated a place for them.
second, i hope they tried a test batch before brewing barrels' worth of lambic. you have no idea what kind of wild yeast is out there.
the amount of time it took them to brew, then fill kegs, then drive it out to Niagara, then sit and wait for it to cool overnight....man, its impressive.

I've always toyed with the idea of building a nanobrewery on a vineyard/orchard's corner. something tiny. hopefully this experiment's the first of a possible growing movement in the sour/lambic direction.

atomeyes wrote: innoculated with wild yeast to allow spontaneous fermentation.

It's not spontaneous if it's inoculated.

Had a ton of fun brewing this with the guys. Hopefully we collected enough bugs and yeast to ferment. Thanks to The Good Earth for letting us camp in their vineyard and thanks to the boys at Flat Rock for setting it up.

...oh, and it's going into Featherstone cab frank barrels tomorrow, so pretty much thanks to the whole region

Been following it on Twitter, and it looks super cool. Lackey, do you have a guesstimate on how much volume you will get out of it?

mintjellie wrote:

atomeyes wrote: innoculated with wild yeast to allow spontaneous fermentation.

It's not spontaneous if it's inoculated.

'Tis. By exposing the beer to allow wild yeast have its way with it, it's wild inoculated. (Maybe they do wave the air around it though, to alert the wild yeast of a meal so they ll tell their tiny friends to get the hell over there?)

Technically nothing ferments spontaneously, as that would mean fermentation in the absence of yeast.

"The Immaculate Infection" as it were.

In the whole "hiya, I'm too into my second '04 Old Crusty (not to mention the yummy rums)", could someone please be so kind as to post links. I'll be too into the turkey stuffing tomorrow to pull 'em up on my own.

Sawdust City's FB page (with a few pics): http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sawdust-C ... ts&fref=ts

And the following Twitter accounts have more thorough breakdowns and pics of the entire event:

SC: https://twitter.com/sawdustcitybeer
Mike Lackey: https://twitter.com/Lackey101
Iain McOustra: https://twitter.com/_Murdoch
Jeff Broeders: https://twitter.com/JeffBroeders

Have at it!

Lackey wrote:Had a ton of fun brewing this with the guys. Hopefully we collected enough bugs and yeast to ferment. Thanks to The Good Earth for letting us camp in their vineyard and thanks to the boys at Flat Rock for setting it up.

you dudes were brewing through the night. were you doing the traditional dough-in method and a 4-6 hr boil or you trying something else?

We have about 800 liters of Niambic right now. Not sure how this liquid will see the light of day because we are planning on doing a batch annually. Likely will take some straight as a 3 year old Lambic-style and blend some with 1 and 2 year old to make a gueze.

We used a variation of the traditional turbid mash that we've employed a couple of times before at GLB and produces the same proteins and starches needed for the long, complex fermentation. Pictures online show the wort was certainly turbid.
I confess, I'm not to sure how long it ended up being boiled since that happened during my shift to sleep but I believe it was 4-5 hrs. The entire brewday was 12-13 hrs and we allowed it to sit in the vineyard, cooling, for a further 14.

All of the above, of course, is also hinging on the assumption we collected enough bugs out there to ferment.
Unfortunately, the skies didn't cooperate with us and we were forced to put a tent over the coolships for several hours over night.
We'll see if we get some action over the few weeks and months.

Belgian wrote:

mintjellie wrote:

atomeyes wrote: innoculated with wild yeast to allow spontaneous fermentation.

It's not spontaneous if it's inoculated.

'Tis. By exposing the beer to allow wild yeast have its way with it, it's wild inoculated. (Maybe they do wave the air around it though, to alert the wild yeast of a meal so they ll tell their tiny friends to get the hell over there?)

Technically nothing ferments spontaneously, as that would mean fermentation in the absence of yeast.

"The Immaculate Infection" as it were.

I tend to think that inoculation implies a purposeful introduction of something specific, rather than passively letting things introduce themselves.