Barley which has been left soaking in water for a couple of days smells sour and vinegar-like. Has this fermented? What will happen if I continue to let it soak in the water? Will it turn into some kind of crude alcohol like the stuff they make in prison?
Smell it. After a day or two it should smell yeasty and sour, like sourdough. You could probably blend it and make sourdough bread products with it if you wanted to. After that, there is a small chance it will turn into a beer-like ferment. But I think grain ferments need to be rather carefully controlled to have good results. Different yeasts have different results, and unless you live in a brewery town, chances are the wild yeasts blowing through the air are grotty sour vinegar ones and not yummy yeasty beery ones. Your nose will know the difference.
The easiest home alcohol you can make is hard cider or simple honey wine, both of which can be made from wild yeast without a lot of special equipment. But a palatable beer from grains is going to be a lot more work.
I have made the mistake of trying to make soup with barley. It’s ok at first, but after a day or so it starts to ferment . . . and not in a good way.
“Wild yeasts blowing through the air”? Are there really?!
There are, but most of the yeasts you get spontaneous fermentation from are yeasts already present on the grain itself.
Anyhow, you can continue to feed it and make yourself a sourdough starter, if you’d like. Scoop out a cup of the barley-water mixture and add it to a cup of flour and a cup of water. The next day, do the same thing again. Repeat until you get a healthy, vigorous starter that bubbles up in a few hours. Now go make sourdough.
Another use for it is as a base for a Polish soup known as zurek or white borscht. It’s usually made from rye and oats, but barley will work, too. You can find my illustrated recipe for it here. It’s quite delicious if you like sour flavors.
:eek: I’ve lived in two (former, sadly) brewing towns, and there was on occasion a distinctive smell. I’m delighted to know that it was at least in part wild yeast! Hah, this is my GQ fact of the year.
if it is making vinegar it will not become alcohol if left to continue. alcohol yeast will not out compete whatever is growing.
Wild yeasts in the air? You betcha.
Will you get a crude beer? Well…not really.
Here’s a basic primer on how beer is made. You take malted barley, crush the grains, and pour water into it. The water temp is anywhere between 148-160. What you’re trying to do is to get all the sugars out of the barley. The trick is that there are different kinds of sugars that are produced at different temps. Warmer temps create more unfermentable sugars, and thus a sweeter product. Lower temps produce a “drier” taste as simple sugars are easier for the yeast to digest. (this is, BTW, a gross oversimplification of the brewing process.)
What you created is called a “wort”. It’s a sugar rich environment that yeast can thrive and reproduce in. The yeast will eat the sugar, and replace it with alcohol. Can you drink it? Well, how full of self loathing are you? It won’t kill you, that’s the good news. There’s no living pathogen harmful to humans that can live in that environment. The taste, however, is going to be terrible. Sour, with probably a combination of grapefruit and microwave popcorn aftertaste.
Wild yeasts, however, are everywhere. Before the 19th century, almost all fermentation was done out in the open. Even today, you can find German and Belgium breweries that let their beer sit in the open while it ferments.
Lambic beer (or at least the stuff made in Brussels.) is entirely made from wild yeast. The breweries literally let their wort sit in a shallow bath in an open attic to collect the yeast. The bacteria is also desired, but I’d guess much of that is coming from the very old and fully inoculated barrels.
I tried making hard cider once by using bakers yeast. The result was … not good.