13,703
edits
Changes
no edit summary
===Definitions===
A '''clean beer''' is any beer that is not your sour, funky, or wild beer; in other words your typical ale or lager. A '''funky beer''' is a term generally used by brewers to refer to beer that is fermented with ''Brettanomyces'', but not lactic acid bacteria. There is a common misconception that ''Brettanomyces'' makes beer sour, but under normal brewing conditions it should not make beer sour. ''Brettanomyces'' does not make lactic acid, but it does make acetic acid, which tastes like vinegar. Brewers do their best to limit the amount of acetic acid that is made by ''Brettanomyces'', which is controlled by limiting its exposure to oxygen. A '''kettle sour beer''' is a beer that has been soured for a short time in a sanitary vessel (usually the boil kettle) and then boiled to kill the lactic acid bacteria, and then finally fermented as a normal beer. These types of beers generally do not contain ''Brettanomyces''. This process has the benefits of creating a sour beer very quickly and greatly reducing any risk of infecting one's cold side brewing equipment (fermenters, hoses, packaging equipment, etc.). Kettle soured beer has the reputation of being less complex than other forms of sour beer. A '''spontaneously fermented beer''' is a type of sour beer that has not been inoculated by any lab cultures but only by the yeast and bacteria present in the environment. This is the typical method used by the Belgian lambic brewers, but there are also many brewers in the rest of the world that have successfully created sour beer this way. Other terms have been used by brewers and can refer to different things or have different definitions depending on who you're talking to. For example, the term '''wild beer''' is used by some to refer to spontaneously fermented beer, and others to refer to any sour beer or funky beer that isn't kettle soured.
==A Brief Background of Yeast/Microbes==