Wilson's harvests yeast from his Astoria apartment's fire escape, which faces an alley. All photos by author.
Wilson stirs hops for his next spontaneously fermented beer. Instead of cooling the liquid, known as wort, immediately, he'll set it out on his fire escape overnight.
Many brewers believe such a bucolic setting is more than a romantic image; it's essential for finding the right microbes.Lauren Salazar, who helped get the modern sour beer movement rolling at New Belgium Brewing Company, says that brewers tend to think green spaces have an advantage over concrete jungles because there's fauna to support the bacteria and yeast strains."If you're not close to a cherry or an apple orchard, somewhere where there's the right kind of bacteria outside…why would they be there?" Salazar said.But a counter-intuitive idea is sometimes the right idea. Barrels become bacterial breeding grounds where brewers can put selective pressure to get the flavors they want. "It's a partnership of what's outside, and what has selected itself on the inside, where it's survival of the fittest. "READ MORE: How Beer Made from Leftover Bread Could Help End Global Food Waste
Fermenting beer is tagged and catalogued at Wilson's Astoria apartment.
"Getting the coolship, we wanted to bring a local feel to the beer. Not many breweries are doing spontaneous fermentation in cities," Acosta told Brooklyn Magazine in 2015.A year before, the brewers discovered that the microflora in their beer came from an ancient grove of fig trees planted by immigrants at the turn of the 19th century.Last October LIC Beer Project released what's likely the city's first commercial spontaneously fermented beer. In an interview on the podcast Steal This Beer, reviewers described it as tasting variously like plums, pluots, and concord grapes, with a vinous texture and slight hint of butane. The tasters loved it. "It's all from the yeast and bacteria in Queens," Acosta said.READ MORE: We Spoke to the Founder of America's First Beer Spa
Wilson examines a spontaneously fermented beer aged in a barrel.