I'm considering trying to brew a simple lambic, which requires some open-air time for wild fermentation and souring of the wort prior to pitching yeast.
I'm wondering if I could use a carboy as the vessel for this, or if its small mouth would prevent the desirable bacteria and wild yeast from making it into the wort.
Topic open-fermentation lambics wild-yeast homebrew
Category Mac
I made a Lambic once from a recipe that called for the yeast out of a bottle of Chimay. I saved the last couple of inches of beer in the bottle and built the yeast up to pitching volume through a series of increasingly larger starters over the course of about a week. It worked pretty good, and the beer turned out great!
What I've found so far is certainly not conclusive, but it appears that lambics (probably the most common spontaneously fermented beer) are innoculated in vats with a very large surface area of the wort exposed to air.
It's conjecture, but to me this implies that having a very large unrestricted exposure to fresh air (which is at least mildly circulated) is a best-practice, if not absolutely necessary.
You will have a much better chance of success if you ferment the beer first with a neutral ale yeast, and then pitch "bugs" (brett, pedio, whatever you like) into it. Simply open fermenting and seeing what happens is seldom successful.
I imagine that you could put a portion of the wort (a gallon or so) into another vessel with a wider open surface overnight (maybe a big kitchen pot or something), and then pour that into the main portion of the wort once it has gathered up some bugs.
Are you inocculating at all, or just trying to see if your "house bugs" are any good?
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