Nobody selected the yeast for this beer. That is the entire premise.

Spontaneous Manifesto is made by coolship: hot wort is run into a wide, shallow vessel and left overnight, where it cools slowly and is inoculated by whatever airborne microorganisms happen to be present. In this case the air belongs to Edmonton, a city sitting in one of the most productive grain-growing regions in the world. The beer then goes to barrel and waits. This 2025 release is a blend of barrels that fermented for one, two and three years, bottled in September 2025 and cellared since.

The technique is old, Belgian in origin, and unforgiving. There is no way to correct course partway through and no guarantee any individual barrel will be worth using. Breweries that work this way manage the risk on the back end, through blending, rather than the front end, through control.

Blind Enthusiasm runs the approach at unusual scale for North America. The brewery says its spontaneous program is one of the largest on the continent, with more than 400 puncheons actively fermenting - a number that only makes sense if you accept that a meaningful share of them will never make the cut.

This is the fourth vintage, released each year at the brewery's Barrel Fest, and Blind Enthusiasm calls it the quintessential expression of its 100 percent spontaneous fermentation. According to the brewery, it shows classic stone fruit, apple and citrus, with a bright red wine fruitiness and balanced acidity. It is also, in their framing, their most awarded beer.

The one, two and three year barrel spread is the detail to hold onto. A young spontaneous barrel is brighter and more acidic; an older one has had time to develop depth. Blending across three vintages is how a beer like this gets both at once, and it is the closest thing to authorship in a process otherwise defined by stepping back.

Spontaneous Manifesto 2025 is 7.3 percent, packaged in 750ml bottles, and available now through the brewery's online shop with Canada-wide shipping.

Editor’s Take

There is something quietly funny about attaching the word manifesto to a process whose central principle is leaving the room. A manifesto is a document of intent. This is a beer made by opening a shallow tray to the Edmonton night and accepting the consequences, then waiting three years to find out what they were.

But the name earns itself on a second look, because committing to this is a genuine position. Anyone can pitch a clean culture and know roughly what Tuesday will bring. Filling more than four hundred puncheons on the understanding that the air over a prairie grain city will handle the microbiology is a statement about what you think beer is for, restated annually in bottle form. The brewery calls this one its quintessential example and releases it every year at the same festival. Four vintages in, that is less a marketing habit than a brewery showing its work.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Spontaneous Manifesto 2025 Lets Edmonton's Air Pick the Yeast

Nobody picked the yeast for this one. The wort cooled overnight in an open vessel and took on whatever Edmonton's air was carrying, and the fourth vintage draws on barrels aged one, two and three years.

Source & Editorial