Is wild beer the next big thing in the beer world?

[Bosh]

The problem with this is:

1. The kind of wild yeasts that exist in Belgium don't exist in a lot of other places, in most places you're going to end up with utter **** unless you introduce yeast on purpose.

2. Letting wild yeast come in and propagate takes a long time which leaves a window of opportunity for bacteria to come in, usually lactobacillus which is the same bacteria that makes milk into yogurt. So pretty much every beer made with wild yeast has a strong sour yogurt-y taste. This is necessarily bad but its a real acquired taste that is very different from normal beer. Personally I like makkoli, which is a kind of Korean rice wine that is milky and sour because of the lactobacillus but most non-Koreans hate it and I don't much care for sour beer.

but in the rest of the world the wild yeasts are all killed

This is not true at all. The process of making the wort is done at too high a temperature for yeast to survive at. It is IMPOSSIBLE to make beer (at least in any way that is even CLOSE to traditional) without killing any kind of life form whatsoever that is in the grain. Now the question is how you put yeast into the beer, you can either put it in or you can hope that some floats in.

Waiting for some random yeast to float in isn't really any more traditional than putting yeast in and that was mostly only done in Belgium and some areas of Germany (specifically around Berlin).

Now the real difference between good traditional beer and crap modern mass-produced beer is if you let the yeast stay in AFTER fermentation or do you strain it all out. Keeping the yeast in lets the beer age much more nicely and produces far better flavors. A good litmus test (although hardly fail safe) to tell if your beer is good or not is if it has live yeast still in it or not (aka "bottle conditioned"). Requiring wild yeast is just silly (unless you really really like sour beer).

For example some of the better mass market beers such as SNPA and Hoegaarten have live yeast.

[Bosh]

Supposedly it is a light golden color which seems odd since supposedly all beers prior to the Pilsener had a dark color.

Again this is not true. Pre-modern barley roasting techniques usually made darkened the grains to a brownish color (and often gave it a smokey flavor, less so if peat was used). Later ways of roasting the barley with indirect heat allowed them to keep the color lighter and got rid of the smokey taste (also they got more sugars out of these grains). People still tended to prefer darker beers since they associated dark color with strength (since if all you used was traditional brown malt color correlated the strength pretty much exactly) so a lot of brewers found ways to make beer that was dark but weak by using mostly pale malt and then a little bit of malt that was cooked so much it was basically burnt.

All of this has ****-all to do with Pilsner.

Now where Pilsner comes in is that some kinds of yeast tend to float around in the beer a lot (especially Belgian white beer yeast, which is why Hoegaarten etc. are so cloudy) while others tend to stick to the bottom (flocculate). Lager yeasts tend to stick to the bottom much better than ale yeasts (although these days there's some modern ale yeasts that flocculate really well), especially since yeast tend to fall out of the solution and settle to the bottom much better at the cold temperatures that lager yeasts do well out.

So light color = using indirect vs. direct heat.
Not cloudy = having yeast that flocculates very well or straining all the yeast out (which is evil)

[Dinner]

This is not true at all. The process of making the wort is done at too high a temperature for yeast to survive at. It is IMPOSSIBLE to make beer (at least in any way that is even CLOSE to traditional) without killing any kind of life form whatsoever that is in the grain. Now the question is how you put yeast into the beer, you can either put it in or you can hope that some floats in.

Actually it is true. The main point to boiling the wort (besides releasing the sugars and the hops oils faster) is to kill off the wild organisms. When the wort cools that is when the brewers pitch the brewers yeast.

[Dinner]

Now where Pilsner comes in is that some kinds of yeast tend to float around in the beer a lot (especially Belgian white beer yeast, which is why Hoegaarten etc. are so cloudy) while others tend to stick to the bottom (flocculate). Lager yeasts tend to stick to the bottom much better than ale yeasts (although these days there's some modern ale yeasts that flocculate really well), especially since yeast tend to fall out of the solution and settle to the bottom much better at the cold temperatures that lager yeasts do well out.

Actually a lot of the cloudiness has to do with proteins, especially pectins, in the brew. That was the reason clarifying agents such as Irish Moss are sometimes used. The floating proteins stick to the Irish Moss and can thus be collected out of the brew making the brew clearer. Yeasts will go inactive and sink to the bottom when they run out of sugar or the alcohol content gets to high.

[Bosh]

Actually it is true. The main point to boiling the wort (besides releasing the sugars and the hops oils faster) is to kill off the wild organisms. When the wort cools that is when the brewers pitch the brewers yeast.

Um, that's like saying that the reason why people bake cakes is that baking the cake kills the organisms in it, its true but completely beside the point since you can't bake a cake in a way that doesn't kill the wild organisms. EVERYONE who makes beer in a traditional way kills off anything wild in it in the process of making the wort, including the brewers who use wild strains.

Actually a lot of the cloudiness has to do with proteins, especially pectins, in the brew.

Right proteins are also a factor (especially if you strain out all the yeast, they're all that's left to make things cloudy) but that has nothing to do with pilsners either.

Yeasts will go inactive and sink to the bottom when they run out of sugar or the alcohol content gets to high.

Temperature is also a big factor, hence clear pilsners.

Also have you ever had beer with wild yeast? I can see why some people like it, but that sour stuff is NEVER going to catch on in a big way even with beer snobs.

[Dinner]

I've never intentionally made beer with wild yeasts before but I have had several batches infected with them (mostly because I was being lazy). I've been brewing beer and cider for years and know exactly how to do it. I did intentionally put raw meat into cider before and that turned out rather gamey (and made a mess when bits of meat clogged up the fermentation lock resulting in a scrumpy geiser in my living room) but that was just good fun.

[Bosh]

Cider's different, there's natural yeast in apple skin so it'll ferment easily without you having to do anything, beer's different since the process of making work kills any yeast that already exist while the process of squeezing apples into apple juice doesn't.