Changes

The sources of microbes that influence spontaneous fermentation are somewhat debatable, especially when referencing [[Lambic]] producers in Belgium. Although the coolship step is regarded as the main contributor to the microbial inoculation for spontaneous beers, it is often claimed that ''Brettanomyces'' living in the barrels is at least partially responsible for the secondary fermentation of spontaneous beers. Roos et al. (2018) used amplicon sequencing technology to samples the interior of barrels and foeders used in one lambic brewery that uses high-pressurized hot water to clean their barrels and sulfur dioxide to sanitize clean them, and found surviving colonies of ''Brettanomyces anomalus'', ''B. bruxellensis'', ''Pediococcus'', and to a lesser extent ''Acetobacter'' and ''Lactobacillus''. The ''Acetobacter'' might be linked to older barrels that are more porous. ''Pichia'' and ''Candida'' species were also found in abundance in some barrels, but not others. They also found high levels of ''Cellulosimicrobium'' and ''Acinetobacter'', which have not been found to be important for lambic fermentation; the authors suspected that these were living in the wood rather than in the beer since they can metabolize cellulose. Although they are probably also not important to the fermentation of lambic, molds were found in the more porous barrels before cleaning, including ''Aspergillus'' and ''Penicillium''. No molds survived the sulfuring process and the diversity of microbes was far higher in barrels than it was for foeders, perhaps because of the higher level of oxygen exposure in barrels compared to foeders, although foeders had a much higher than expected amount of surviving ''Saccharomyces'' <ref>[https://aem.asm.org/content/early/2018/10/15/AEM.02226-18 The interior surfaces of wooden barrels are an additional microbial inoculation source for lambic beer production. J. De Roos, D. Van der Veken, L. De Vuyst. 2018. DOI: 10.1128/AEM.02226-18.]</ref>.