Beer Forum

First time poster here. I live next to wine country in the willamette valley (Oregon). My goal this spring is to make some wort and then expose it to the elements to try and get my own spontaneous/wild fermentation going. I've thought about just leaving a screen over a bucket on my back porch over night and I've thought about maybe driving around at night in the heart of wine country with the wort secure in the back of a pickup truck bed. Anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? If so any suggestions. I realize I'll have very little control over the taste by approaching it this way but I can always blend later etc..

I think this will be a great project. Just a couple of points to consider. I wouldn't drive around with the wort uncovered. You would get a lot of road dust and other unwanted contaminants floating in there. I would suggest waiting until August or September when the grapes are nearing ripeness so yeast activity will be at its greatest. Use the time between now and them to make friends at one of the vineyards and get permission to leave your open fermenter out between the rows overnight. I think that would get you the most wild yeast with the least amount of unwanted stuff.

Good luck with this!

I used to live up in the same area, in Tualatin. beautiful country but I couldn't handle the rain and local politics and went back to Nebraska.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

Welcome PDX. That's a cool idea, keep us posted.

So here's the update with my wild fermentation experiment. I made two batches of wort (using jamils flanders red and his oud bruin recipes). I made nice with a local winery and the winemaker let me expose the wort to the vineyard for two straight nights. I did so in a bucket with multiple screens over the top to try and keep the wrong type of critters out and let the wild yeast in. It took a week before I noticed signs of fermentation in one batch and about 10 days before i noticed the same activity in the other. I left them in the buckets in my closet for two weeks and then i transfered to carboys. At 7 months I was concerned about not getting enough oxygen so I transferred the flanders oud bruin back to a bucket and brewed fresh wort to top it off. At that point it had a horse blanket smell, not much flavor and a burn in the aftertaste. Now I'm 16 months into the experiment and the flanders red recipe has a gravity of 1.012 with a horseblanket flavor but pretty one dimensional. The Oud Bruin has a much stronger flavor, it doesn't taste like any beer I've had before and I'm not sure how to describe it. There is a strong barn aroma and the burn i tasted before is still there, kinda a hay/vinegar aftertaste. I'm debating what to do with the flanders red as 1.012 is higher than i want and i'm wondering if transfer and top off to see if that spurs any flavor development. Even if I don't I'm going to wait until at least 18 months before I try and bottle anything. I'm also considering an oak addition but i'm worried it would overwhelm the flavor that is there. So that's the update, not sure I learned that much but it was a fun experiment none the less.

I bet that burn/vinegary flavor is from acetobacter growing wildly with the presence of oxygen in the beginning of your fermentation when it was outside. Very cool project and I hope you at least get something interesting to drink out of it. What about adding some fresh grapes or other fruit to the fermentation?