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So I tried the wild yeast capturing thing with DME wort where in Salt Lake. It seems to be working, albeit slowly. I'll be scaling up soon and brewing with it next weekend. One strange thing though, it is producing an odd chemical smell. The closest thing I can think that it smells like is...

This is what I did, except I used wheat malt instead of barley. I won't be following the normal sake making routine however. After it ferments for a while I will pour normal wort over the moldy wheat and then ferment normally with yeast. Assuming, of course, that it doesn't turn into the...

So I infected four pounds of wheat malt with koji rice a couple days ago. Cooked the wheat, cooled to ~130 F and mixed in the koji rice in a bucket. The mold appears to be spreading but it smells funky. Not a particularly good funky either. I attempted to keep everything sterile but I'm...

I've kegged all the wildbrews/bretts I've made and never had any problems. I even reuse the plastic buckets, racking canes, and such for non-wildbrews. Of course, I usually only make ales, not lagers and the only beers I make which ferment more than 2-4 weeks are the wildbrews/bretts. For...

I think you usually get both. How much of each, depends on a variety of factors, the area, temperature, season, etc. Complex. There are also other yeasts then just the Sacch. and Bretts. as well. I think (could be wrong) that the Sacch. produces more esters than the Bretts. So the fruity...

Interesting. Traditionally nail polisher remover is acetone. There are biosynthetic routes to form simple ketones such as acetone. I will spare you lot the stream of conciousness gibberish I started to write.

When I get this yeast, hopefully next week, I'm going to split the batch and do a full Pombe fermentation for one half and a "fast sour beer method" for the other half.

What I was going to do with the koji experiment was use a dry airlock so that dust and crap couldn't fall into te beer but air could still get in. I think I'm going to order some of the cheese molds...

Seconded. ++

On a related note, I was talking to a guy about his mead making and how he would ferment his mead would be by using unpasteurized honey and not excessively heating the mead, just enough to dissolve the honey. Evidently there are wild yeast which live in raw honey. It might be interesting...

I was thinking about this as well but I was unsure if the mold would take in the wort. Maybe on barley like I'm going to do with the koji? Speaking of koji, I have a tub of koji rice sitting in my fridge right now. I been having trouble making it to the LHBS before it closes though, so I...

Heh, OK. I misunderstood about the blending thing. What I was trying to get at with the starter bit was to use normal wort as the initial bug capturing mechanism since wort is (I think, could be wrong) a little more resilient against bad type infections than agar would be. Since you would...

Ah, I see. I think we are misunderstanding each other.

I was thinking that the wort would be a little more resilient against undesirable infections than the agar would be. Once the wild fermentation is going then we plate the good stuff. As far blending it with domesticated yeasts, you'll have to see what the flavor profile is like. It's been...

Schlenkeria - Great stuff, I've been watching with interest. I've been thinking of doing something similar but rather than using agar to capture the beasties, I've been thinking of doing the more traditional thing with wort and then plating the resulting growth onto an agar 'petri dish.' I...

Actually the yeast lives on the skin of the grapes and this is what ferments the hooch. You probably don't want actual insects in your beer. Yeast lives on the skins of most fruit.

I didn't know that about the juniper berries. I'd still be willing bet that yeast live on them though. Well not too much money... Anyway, I am going to try another open air fermentation but I'm going to do it away from the city.

Schizosaccharomyces pombe is a type of fission yeast originally isolated from from an East African millet beer. It is used commonly in a variety of research in biology. Due to my deviant and unhealthy obsession in making beer with strange critters, I am unsurprisingly interested in using this...

I've tried to do the open air spontaneous fermentation thing several times and my results have always been dire. So dire in fact, that I refused to even taste the result. Of course, I lived in the middle of a large city at the time and had two huge dogs and two cats. So, yeah, unsurprising...

The first time I made a Flanders I did a long, complex, labor intensive decoction mash. After that I did as below and it worked fine.