Ferment how? Any random yeast or bacteria that falls into it?
Not sure about beer however when making mead (honey wine) they dissolved the honey in water then put it in a pot and covered the pot with cheese cloth and put it outside. Eventually, if lucky, the right yeast ended up in the pot and started munching on the sugar, converting it to alcohol as a byproduct.
If you haven't tried mead, you should. It's absolutely delicious! You can't taste the alcohol in it, so be careful.
