Brewspace contamination risks?

[adamyoung]

I’m planning on doing a spontaneous/wild fermentation today, leaving outside until probably Friday – then the carboy will go to the basement to do its thing. My concern is that the gas released by the wild fermentation may introduce a strong presence of “bugs” in the basement over time, which is where I chill and aerate my wort and pitch my yeast for traditional ales and lagers. Anyone out there with experience brewing/fermenting sour and traditional beers know if I should be concerned about that? Thanks!!

Also, my apologies if this has been addressed in another thread - I didn't see a specific answer for this in my wanderings.

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

Before you get there I would inoculate a smaller batch, and step it up to make sure you get good stuff and not mold.

But I don't think the CO2 will transfer Lactic acid Bacteria or Brett to your other batches.

 

[kh54s10]

I don't really know but don't think you will have any problems with "bugs" getting to your other brews.

I would put your chances of getting something good with a wild fermentation at less than 50% though.

I tried to capture wild yeast by setting out a jar of wort and it just got nasty. I then tried dunking a rose in a jar of wort. It seems I got a wild yeast. It took a 1.045 wort only to 1.020. It is sweet and very fruity tasting. I plan on another test batch, 1.5 gallons. This time I am going to mash very cool looking for a very fermentable wort.

 

[beergolf]

I would not risk a full batch.

I would just try to capture some wild yeast and then do a small test batch. That is what I did and had some mixed results. I took three mason jars with some1.020 wort. Cheesecloth over the opening. Let them sit outside overnight and then brought them in the hose, covered with foil. One batch developed mold. One batch fermented out, but when I tried to grow it up and crash it, it just would not drop out of suspension. The third batch worked great. I let it go for a couple of weeks, stepped it up and it smelled great. I made a quick one gallon batch to test it out. Made a great saison. I have been keeping this yeast alive for 3 1/2 years.

No need to worry about infecting your basement. I have been brewing sours for years and always have 5-6 sours at various stages of aging in my basement where I ferment my clean beers. Just keep the airlock topped off and you are good.

The glass carboys are sours, the buckets you see are clean beers.

 

[adamyoung]

Thank you guys for the insight - I think I'll take your advice on going smaller to begin with so that I know what my basis is. I'm out of DME at the moment, and the weather is supposedly really great right now for trying this in Illinois (we've been steadily well above freezing at night and steadily under 65F during the day for weeks now), so I'm going to try and hunt down some Malta Goya soda, water it down a bit, and put that in a casserole dish with a brew-in-a-bag as a covering for it and leave it outside tonight; tomorrow, I'll put that in a 1-gallon glass jug and let it ride in the basement...at least that's the beginnings of my newly-forming plan here : )

 

[sweetcell]

I'm going to try and hunt down some Malta Goya soda, water it down a bit, and put that in a casserole dish with a brew-in-a-bag as a covering for it and leave it outside tonight

when lambic brewers put their wort in a coolship to cool overnight, it takes hours for that cooling to happen so the wort spends a good amount of time at bug-friendly temps (in the ~80-110*F range). the potential issue with homebrewers putting a gallon of wort out, even if boiling, it that it will cool too quickly.

so fingers crossed that your process works. if it doesn't, you might consider some way of slowing the cooling (insulating the wort, using heat source and maybe a controller, etc.)

 

[adamyoung]

Very good point sweetcell - I will see how it is doing in a week or so. Right now it is hiding in my closet with a shirt wrapped around it

 

[adamyoung]

I checked it this morning and there is definitely some 'flora' growing in there. There were off-white colored blobs around the edges - not sure if it is yeast, mold, or bacteria.

 

[NTexBrewer]

when lambic brewers put their wort in a coolship to cool overnight, it takes hours for that cooling to happen so the wort spends a good amount of time at bug-friendly temps (in the ~80-110*F range). the potential issue with homebrewers putting a gallon of wort out, even if boiling, it that it will cool too quickly.

so fingers crossed that your process works. if it doesn't, you might consider some way of slowing the cooling (insulating the wort, using heat source and maybe a controller, etc.)

I have had some anecdotal evidence of this. Last year I did two cool ship beers using the big aluminum casserole pans used for buffet food.

Beer 1 I split 4 gallons between two pans and let it sit out over night. This beer developed great sourness. The beer showed some signs of spontaneous fermentation but did nothing after 4 days so I finished the beer off with dry saison yeast.

Beer 2, I split between four pans and this beer was not as sour, had more Brett character and did spontaneously ferment.

So I agree with sweetcell in that sometimes using larger amounts of wort will get you different microbes compared to growing up bugs from a mason jar.

Adamyoung, here is a link to my write up of my two attempts. I'll be doing some more coolship beers as soon as the weather in Texas cools off.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=576546

 

[adamyoung]

Very interesting on the way volume played into it for you ntexbrewer - I would be fine with either scenario for mine, I think