THIS IS THE 2018 LINE-UP. STAY TUNED FOR THE 2019 EDITION.
As you might know, the goat loves some .info when drinking his grainy drinks. Like every year we will host a proper number of lectures around the science, history and cultural aspects of fermentation going deep into the matter to provide something to chew on while drinking the funk. This list will regularly be updated towards the festival.
Carnivale Brettanomyces Lectures
Brandon Jones: For the love of the barrel
Brandon Jones head blender/brewer of the Embrace the Funk line of sour & wild beers at Yazoo Brewing Company in Nashville, TN will give an in depth talk on wood fermentation. An analysis of different oak vessels, the history and the different maintenance techniques required for a proper wood cellar.
Mark Stone, Asa Stone, and Adam Harbaugh: Lambic at the Crossroads of Climate Change and Cultural Practice: The Impacts of Climate Change on Lambic Production
Inoculation of lambic and other spontaneously fermented beers is known to be highly sensitive to ambient conditions surrounding the koelschip. One of the most important environmental variables impacting the character of the spontaneous inoculation is the overnight low temperature. For example, traditional lambic brewing methods require nighttime low temperatures between approximately -8°C and +8°C to promote inoculation from desirable wild microbial flora. In the Zenne Valley, the average overnight temperature has increased by nearly 2°C over the past 65 years. As a result, the number of nights in a brewing season with low temperatures in the desired range has dropped dramatically from around 155 days in the 1950s to 130 days currently. In this talk, we will discuss the ramifications of these changing climatic conditions on lambic production in the Zenne Valley including projections through the end of the 21st Century and also provide context for these changes with respect to cultural heritage, practice, and tradition.
Marco Daane: From divine saliva to a kiss of wine – Early European days of beer yeast
The common awareness and use of yeast before Pasteur and van Leeuwenhoek. A talk bringing us from Danzig in 1395 to Paris in 1489. From apparent prohibition of bottom fermentation to Kveik. A talk putting an end to a beer myth or two.
Roel Mulder: Lambic myths debunked
Lambic is one of Belgium’s great beers – and it is known not just for its excellent taste and unique production process, but also for the great stories associated with it. But what is true of the wonderful narratives involving dukes, Spanish soldiers and ancient recipes? Roel will walk you through all the stories, both false and true, and will show you where lambic actually comes from – and probably will shatter some of you long-held beliefs. Not because the truth less interesting: once lambic history starts making more sense, you’ll appreciate it even more.
Richard Preiss: The past, present and future of Brettanomyces in beer
Richard Preiss (co-founder of Escarpment Laboratories and frequent contributor to Milk the Funk) will talk about the history of Brettanomyces in brewing science, the places our funky friend Brett has led us to today, and some of the possible future paths of Brett in beer. This talk will include presentation of new scientific data in the world of Brett, both from Richard’s lab and from others. Richard will also discuss practical tips to control Brett flavour and avoid off flavours like THP.
Dave Janssen: Former beers of France – French styles from the 1800s and early 1900s
Dave Janssen, known from Hors Catégorie Brewing will look with us into some of the lost beers formerly brewed in France. A remnant of one of these, Bière de Garde, has survived into the modern world. However, modern versions generally bear little resemblance to historic versions. In addition to looking into the historic Bières de Garde, this talk will cover additional beers of France’s past, including an acidic white beer and a brown beer from Lyon which some have likened to English porter.
Dr. Levi Fried: Sourdough and Kvass: the microbiology and history of brewing with bread.
Providing practical applications and techniques in brewing with sourdough loaves and fermenting with sourdough starter, the Microbiology of sourdough starter and Science of leavening. A brief summary of Kvass and the history of brewing with bread.
David Everitt and Matt Park: guided tasting of beer-wine hybrid beverages with Burdock Brewery.
A guided tasting of beer-wine hybrid beverages with Burdock Brewery. Join the Burdock brewers for a mind expanding journey into a world where beer and wine dance, sing, play in the same glass. The tasting will include beer-wine blends, cross fermentations, grape skin-contact beers and more. Learn about the techniques used in production and blending, troubleshooting problems, off-flavours, and how to define these unique beverages.
Lars Marius Garshol: Lithuania, Europe’s best-kept beer secret
Lithuania has always marched to a different drum, also when it comes to beer. There, the beer revolution started in 1992. When communism ended, suddenly anyone could start a business, and within a couple of years hundreds of farmhouse brewers had done exactly that. A quarter of a decade later, Lithuania still has a beer scene unlike any other.
Jace Marti: Brewing Traditional Berliner Weisse at the August Schell Brewing Company
As the second oldest, family owned brewery in the United States, the August Schell Brewing Company focuses on traditional German style beers, and our Noble Star Collection of Berliner Weisse is no exception. We’ll take a deep dive into some of the historical brewing methods of making Berliner Weisse, how they evolved over the years, and talk about how those methods helped shape the sour beer program at the August Schell Brewing Company. Finally, we’ll go in depth about how we make our line of traditionally brewed, mixed culture Berliner Weisse beers.
Ed Wray: Strange Brews – The many ways many ways in which human ingenuity has allowed us to make a wide range alcoholic drinks from starchy plants and the enzymes, yeasts and fungi that help us.
*Malting and the important enzymes
*Fermentation, the enzymes involved and how Brett. and S. diastaticius can take it further than normal brewing yeast.
*Sake and how fungi can be used to break down starch without malting.
*How Chicha de Muko is simply (and crudely!) made.
*how acid hydrolysis can also be used to make fermentable sugar from starch.
Amund Polden Arnesen: Raw Beer brewing
Beers brewed from raw wort are truly unique in many ways. Still being brewed by traditional brewers in Norway and elsewhere they are a big part of the living cultural brewing heritage of the Nordic and Baltic countries. The flavours are absolutely fascinating and amazingly different compared to boiled beers. Brewing with raw wort stands out as a blowing way of making beer that can inspire us modern brewers to rethink what we thought possible within the realm of beer.
Being one of the few all raw beer breweries in the world, the guys at Eik & Tid have accumulated some unique knowledge about this ancient farmhouse brewing technique. What are the challenges and advantages to adapting this method to a modern sour and wild beer brewery? What does raw beer taste like? How do you even wrap your head around the fact that unboiled wort can ferment into great beer? These and other raw beer matters will be confused and clarified by brewer Amund Polden Arnesen of Eik & Tid at this years festival.
Richard Kilcullen – scaling your barrel room.
A talk about scaling barrel aged and wild fermented beer for production operations: a discussion on expanding small-scale blending and barrel programs to meet increasing demand.
The talk will involve methodology, process flow, specialist equipment and a history of his successes and analysis of his failures as a production manager and will focus on production management, variety of brands and common issues.
Dave Janssen: Turbid mashing: Carbohydrate composition and utilization in lambic fermentation
Turbid mashing is traditional mashing process used in modern lambic brewing that produces a wort rich in carbohydrates that are unfermentable to typical brewing yeasts. This talk will look at the carbohydrate composition of turbid mashed wort, and how the carbohydrates are processed during fermentation of lambic. Turbid mashed wort will also be compared to wort produced from more traditional step and decoction mashes. Finally, the carbohydrate composition of turbid mashed wort will be used to speculate on alternative methods to yield a wort rich in longer chain carbohydrates.
Jeff Mello: Low-Hanging Fruit: The Search for Local Yeast
Join Jeff Mello, Chief Yeast Wrangler of Bootleg Biology, as he discusses best practices for locating, propagating, storing and brewing with local yeast. With simple techniques outside of a traditional laboratory setting, home brewers and professional brewers alike can brew with their own unique house culture.
Mattias Terpstra, Tim Gormley, Tom Jacobs and Austin Jevne: Gruit, history, foraging, brewing techniques, discussion and samples.
A joint effort by the brewers from Nevel, Burial, Forager and Antidoot discussing the whole spectrum of gruit. History, foraging, recipe design, brewing techniques, methodology and more.
Jitka Ilčíková: Wild Creatures – Brewery among the wineyards.
Wild Creatures is located in the heart of the wine region in the Czech Republic. Having a wine yard themselves, but also lost their souls to brewing, they combine the two into rather unique results.
Spontaneous fermented beer gets complemented with grapes such as Saint Laurent and Morivian Muscat. Classic wine methods such as Straw wine are taken from the regional vintner’s knowledge.
Join Jitka for a trip from resurrected beer tradition to almost forgotten wine methodology.
Trevor Rogers from De Garde: Spontaneous Oregon Ales: Process, Intent and Exploration
De Garde Brewing, founded in 2012 Linsey and Trevor Rogers, is often considered the first exclusive spontaneously fermented beer producer in the United States, and seen the small production, 95% of their production is sold directly out of their tap room.
Trevor will tell you all about he produces his wort, the desired characteristics and the proces and ingredients to achieve those, blending, packaging goals and challenges. A number of beers wil be served and asking questions is encouraged.
Simonas Gutautas: The quirks of Lithuania’s thriving traditional farmhouse ale culture
Besides Lithuanians were last Europe’s pagans who still speak in the oldest Indo-European living language that is the closest existing language to ancient Indian language of Sanscrit, Lithuanians kept secrets of ancient brewing techniques, still uses unique isolated yeast strains, unique hop varieties and other various quirks of Lithuanian farmhouse ale culture.
