In this study, we propose a method for synthetic natural gas production from low rank coal using microbial catalyst. Anaerobic cultures on Indonesian sub-bituminous coal were carried out with a microbial consortium enriched from brewery sludge. The microbial consortium could convert volatile matters in the coal into methane at ambient condition and the CH4 fraction in the gas phase was higher than that in the conventional biogas from organic wastes. The effects of fermentation conditions such as coal loading, culture temperatures and yeast extract concentrations on the process performance were investigated. Also, microbial community involved in biogenic methane production from the coal was analyzed.