Howto: Capture Wild Yeast - Page 36

KrisPaulk77 · 05-27-2010, 02:46 PM

Hello all, long time lurker, first time posting. I'm a complete rookie / noob at wild and sour beers, but I've been intrigued by them beers for a while now, and this thread inspired me. I set out a jar of starter wort in late April, and it definitely caught something. The sample is cloudy as all get out and has a decent layer of tan yeast at the bottom. It smells hella funky. I guess you could call it barnyard-y, or animal-like, but also dusty, maybe even musty. I've read that brett produces barnyard and horsey aromas, but I've never read anything about dusty or musty aroma. It almost smells like a room in an old house. Is that a normal thing with wild yeast?
Also, it is forming some kind of thick, white, mucousy layer at the top of the jar? Could this be a pellicle?
I'm really excited about the possibility of brewing a wild beer, but I'd hate to make wort and then ruin it by pitching in mold infected starter. Any comments or help is appreciated.

ericd · 05-27-2010, 07:47 PM

You could make a small 1 gallon extract batch to try it out. You never know what you'll get doing this. The great thing is it's free, if you don't like it you can just try again.

ReverseApacheMaster · 05-28-2010, 02:36 AM

My concern here is that the OP states the first step is an introduction of Enteric Bacteria -- E. Coli. Isn't that pretty dangerous to make a big batch of E. Coli juice??

ericd · 05-30-2010, 07:07 PM

It dies and is replaced by the other yeasts and bugs. That data is from the wild beers made in the lambic region. What actually happens in yours would really depend on your location I'd imagine.

Starderup · 05-30-2010, 08:34 PM

Role as normal microbiota

E. coli normally colonizes an infant's gastrointestinal tract within 40 hours of birth, arriving with food or water or with the individuals handling the child. In the bowel, it adheres to the mucus of the large intestine. It is the primary facultative anaerobe of the human gastrointestinal tract.[17] (Facultative anaerobes are organisms that can grow in either the presence or absence of oxygen.) As long as these bacteria do not acquire genetic elements encoding for virulence factors, they remain benign commensals.[18]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli

Abadeon · 06-02-2010, 01:17 AM

Guy, this is a amazing tread! Here in Brazil we can only have dry yeast (Fermentis, etc), and any this amazing tread, with that one that show´s how to make a yeast bank, give me a whole new yummylicious set of possibilities!

Starderup · 06-03-2010, 06:09 PM

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/dining/02sour.html

drummstikk · 06-14-2010, 02:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KingBrianI

That confirms a suspicion I had that you could essentially capture the "essence" of a place by capturing wild yeast and other buggies there.

I'm thinking the floral/grassy flavors that may be captured from a meadow would make a great pale ale or IPA.

Earthy/woody flavors from the forest would make a killer Bitter.

What better use for a barn yeast than a nice funky belgian farmhouse ale?

And how nice would the fruity flavors from orchard yeast be with a hefeweizen.

No, the only flavors you would capture are those derived from microorganisms at the site of collection. The floral/grassy flavors in a meadow come from flowers and grasses, not microbes.

When these flavors show up in fermentation, it's because yeast have created the flavors from sugar, not somehow captured them from the environment.

Anyway, I hope that makes sense and you understand that yeast don't reproduce flavors, they produce them.

Your best bet is to culture yeast from fruit skins, rotting fruit, fruit flies, or bees. Streak out the fruit/bee/fly on a plate of YPD-agar or 1.030 wort with yeast nutrient in 2% agar. Grow them up between room temp and 30C for several days until you have nice large colonies or a big lawn of growth. Re-streak and grow until you get single colonies. Isolate opaque colonies on a new plate, and after growing for a few days, smell the plate. Grow up strains that aren't totally nasty in 1.030 + nutrient wort and taste. Happy screening!

smizak · 06-14-2010, 04:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abadeon

Guy, this is a amazing tread! Here in Brazil we can only have dry yeast (Fermentis, etc), and any this amazing tread, with that one that show´s how to make a yeast bank, give me a whole new yummylicious set of possibilities!

OMG my new sig.

mindghost · 06-14-2010, 12:13 PM

This thread is awesome. I've been brewing meads since January using wine yeast, but wild sounds really cool so I set out a steril jar with 1/2 inch of organic apple juice (a previous poster mentioned having good success with it) for 2 hours last Thursday. I did it in the morning while it was quite chilly out here in West NJ.

By Saturday night I noticed growth. On the bottom of the jar (inside) there are several tan, circular colonies. The juice itself is quite cloudy. On the surface of the juice were several mold colonies (circular and white, with green in the center). I've fished those out using a sterile metal spoon.

My question is, what do I have going in there? The mold was obvious, but what is making the juice cloudy and what are the tan circular growths at the bottom of the juice?

I plan to let the bugger keep going for a bit, even if it all turns out to be mold, just to watch the progress.

Thanks for any reply.