Wild fermented beer is something like between traditional art and experimental music. Beer geeks also have a similar extreme, and it is called sour beer.
Theory
First, let's define the terms. Sour beer is a beer fully or partially fermented by wild yeast cultures and bacteria. Most often, this is Brettanomyces yeast in conjunction with the bacteria Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. All these names are of great importance in any case. It is similar to this, and this drink is the most unusual taste.
- The whole world of sour beer can be divided into two categories:
The old school is the Belgian Lambic family, the Flemish red ale, the brown ale “Oud Bruin” and the German “Berliner Vice”. - The new school is wild and sour ales created by US crafters (and, to a limited extent, Europe).
It’s hard to make such a beer. It needs separate rooms (so that wild yeast cultures do not spoil other brewing), you need a lot of space for barrels or open fermenters, you need to constantly monitor the progress of fermentation in each barrel, and in the end, you still have to collect the taste of beer from what fermented. And after all this, there remains the risk that the beer will go to a not very knowledgeable buyer who does not read the label, pour sour meat in the sink, and then write a complaint on the Internet. But they still make sour beer. Why? Because now it is a frontier of beer tastes and aromas. The unpredictability of fermentation allows you to get taste tones unique to beer, and the brewer's task, in this case, is to mix blends in such a way as to preserve these shades and make the beer itself suitable for consumption.
Old school
The old school is based on the legendary Belgian Lambic beer, produced in Brussels and the Senna River Valley. Lambic beer can only be made in Brussels and its environs, so the unique local microflora comes into play, which is dominated by a variation of wild yeast Brettanomyces Bruxellensis. At the heart of this beer is two-thirds of malted barley and a third of unmalted wheat. The wort obtained from this is poured into an open tub and allows wild bacteria and yeast to begin their work.
They cook it from October to May, because in the summer months there are too many extra microorganisms in the air, and rooms with vats are not cleaned in principle - they are afraid to disturb the microflora. After the start of fermentation, the lambic is poured into barrels in which it roams for up to three years. Lambic itself is a rare, specific product, and you can try it only in Brussels and the surrounding area. To taste, it is a cross between white wine and strong, very dry cider. For a wider public, they usually make a more combed blend of old and young brews called gueuze. It is noteworthy that in Belgium there are several breweries that buy ready-made lambic and create gueuze from it, that is, in fact, they do not even produce beer itself.
In addition to gose, there are several more variations of the lambic. The simplest is "faro", or lambic with added sugar. Sweetness allows you to muffle sour tones and makes faro one of the most acceptable forms with which you can begin your acquaintance with the world of sour beer. Scream, a lambic with the addition of sour cherries, is the most popular variation that occasionally happens in pubs for bottling as a beer for women. Other fruit variations: raspberry, peach, blackcurrant, grape or strawberry. It is important to remember that not all fruit beer is lambic. Very often, a different type of beer is at the core, and the brewer is simply trying to get on the popularity of Belgian fruit ales.
New school
The new school is different in that it uses not only traditional Belgian techniques, but also develops its own hybrid approaches. If the Belgian lambic is a carefully restored Ford of the 1930s, then American wild ale is a completely shoveled hot rod based on this Ford. Since Americans are not constrained by beer traditions, they can do very wild things. For example, take one bruin as a basis, insist it on guava, mix it with a strong stout, drive it into barrels and see what happens, or make the imperial version of Berliner Weiss and keep it in barrels with raspberries.