Glossary
Spontaneous fermentation
Fermentation by ambient microorganisms that settle into cooling wort, rather than by a culture the brewer pitched.
The full record
Spontaneous fermentation has its own catalogue entry with the detail this page summarises — causes, thresholds, related styles and evidence.
Spontaneous fermentation — Allow ambient microorganisms to inoculate cooling wort rather than pitching a culture, producing lambic and its derivatives.
Related
- Coolship — The vessel that makes it possible.
- Mixed fermentation — The pitched-culture equivalent.
- Lambic — The archetypal example.
More vocabulary
Arrested fermentation · Barrel ageing · Batch sparging · Biotransformation · Blending · Bottle conditioning · Bottom fermentation · Burtonisation · Cask conditioning · Centrifugation
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.