Motorworks Brewing has taken a fresh approach to a traditional brewing method. Launching as part of the Bradenton brewery’s new wild beer program, the spontaneously fermented Fermentis Camino was recently brewed in the back of lead brewer Jose Martinez’s 1984 El Camino Conquista.
Yup, you read that right. Motorworks transformed a truck bed into a coolship — DIY-style.
“This whole idea started over the summer when [brewer Andrew Pollard] mentioned wanting a swimming pool because of how hot it was. I was trying to sell the El Camino at the time, so I jokingly suggested he buy it off me — the bed is pretty much a mobile pool — and that’s when it dawned on me: I already have a coolship. It’s just on wheels,” Martinez said in a statement. “We measured the bed of the El Camino, and the dimensions were damn near perfect for a 3.5-barrel brew (the size of our pilot system). We found a heat-resistant, food-grade, FDA-compliant liner that would fit the bed and went from there.”
A coolship, for the uninitiated, is an open vessel fit for spontaneous fermentation; its large surface area allows unfermented beer, or wort, to cool more efficiently. Once the steaming wort is added to the coolship, it sits there, mingling with indigenous bacteria and wild yeast in the air that give wild beers distinct characteristics like funk and sense of place.
Seasonality and temperature are an important part of the process, which is why the brewery crew got started on Fermentis Camino when cool overnight temps were forecasted this past weekend.
“Coolships are rare here in Florida, and we’ve all been interested in doing this for a while,” said head brewer Bob Haa. “When I visited Cantillon [Brussels] in 2012 I considered that a bucket-list trip, almost like a pilgrimage. When I was 22 years old I was buying old, dusty bottles of lambics from a guy in St. Petersburg who couldn’t sell them. They were so good I went back and cleared out his supply, and since I started homebrewing in the late ’80s I’ve been inspired by wild beer styles.
“I’ve always been leery about the ramifications of doing it in a commercial brewery, but we now have a solid crew and the processes in place and care to make it work.”
That being said, Motorworks isn’t in a rush to release Fermentis Camino to the world. The brew will sit in a barrel for at least a year, according to Haa, while its flavors are monitored along the way.
“It looked nice and frothy and aerated when it was transferred from the Camino into the fermenter, so we’re just hoping for a cool, funky beer showcasing Bradenton’s unique microflora. This is the beginning of a spontaneous fermentation program we’d really like to keep going in the future,” Martinez said.
This article appears in Jan 11-18, 2018.