re: Homebrewing: In-Process Thread

My spontaneous fermentation barrel has been making me nervous for sure. Nervous about 15 gallons of 1st & 2nd turbid mash attempts fermented with yeast captured via spontaneous fermentation... nah, you fooling me

I noticed that the spontaneous fermentation starters were slow burn type fermentation and not the rolling boil that I'm used to with my domesticated saison and brett yeast. Well it was no different with this barrel, just slow big bubbles building a pretty thick krausen. I took a gravity reading after about 10 days and it was only down to 1.040 from 1.060... that gave me the cold sweats! Well this morning I noticed that there was finally some violent fermentation going on The barrel is boiling and you can hear it hissing. I'm not sure how low it will go initially, the turbid mash should have produced a good bit of fermentables that will be left for the late stages brett and bacteria to tackle. I'm going to let it ride open outside through this cool snap and then close it up and move it inside to a final resting spot until next year.

By the way, the taste is surprisingly clean at this point.