Biohazard!

[Aspera]

I just sampled my first wild fermentation, a raspberry-wheat braggot and lived to tell about it. I think that I better dispose of it before the CDC storms my apartment or the EPA asumes that it is missing spent reactor fuel. Oh well, I geuss I could save it just in case someone needs some warts removed. Has anyone actually been able to produce something more like a framboise?

[Ben Brewcat]

It's possible; I've had some homebrewed ones (using prepared inoculations) that absolutely blew away the imports. However you need to know that </font> the local microflora here (anywhere) is very different that that in the about 100-mile radius area in northern europe where the gueuze, framboise, lambic etc are traditionally produced.</font> Those beers are made, aged a year or more, blended, aged some more, often blended again, and then maybe ready.</font>
They've had hundreds of years to find a recipe, fermenting schedule, blending schedule, and even equipment with the "right" (predictable) bugs in the oak to use... we just don't have anywhere near that much experiential time with your local bugs.

That said, you can get a preselected inoculation of the three or four major players for those fermentations from White Labs or Wyeast (Wyeast had a bigger selection last I looked). Usually, the beer is fermented with normal yeast, and then the bugs are added and it's left to do it's thing for a year or so. Use either the blends, or for a very specialized geeky biohazard brewer you can get the individual bugs Brettanomyces, Pediococcus, Lactobacillus, etc. and pitch at varying times. Or split the batch, innoculate seperately and blend the results to perfection.

Interestingly Biohazard (http://liddil.com/beer/lambic/lambic.html) is the name of a good online resource for these beers if you want to give them a try. They're tough but very rewarding... truly the holy grail of homebrewing is an accurate, drinkable Gueuze (or lambic et. al.).

Don't give your braggot up yet! Give it some time. Be sure to sanitize the bejeesus out of your equipment though, or better yet keep the plastic you used seperate from your brewing/meadmaking plastic. Wild bugs can be murder to get out, and may lend a "house flavor" to the rest of your endeavors you may not enjoy :mad:

[Aspera]

Thank for the bejeesus tip. After seeing what lay at the bottom of the carboy 1) I will always hesitate before ordering a Cantillion and 2) will only bottle something difficult to contaminate (like mead) for the next couple weeks. The end product looked like sewage and smelled like pickled beets/peat moss/the day after a tailgate. I didn't even bother to sanitize the bottles or caps (I'm never going to use them again). Maybe I'll just revert to making nice clean extract based German beer smile.gif