Howto: Capture Wild Yeast

i like the blend and dreg/oak experiment. i peeled off a little of my tripel and oaked it... its aging in bottles now and i haven't tried it yet. it was pitched with brett-c and the oak at the same time.

on topic, tonight i'm taking oranges (mom's house) and trying to get the yeast off those. going straight for a drinkable batch without stepping it up. if there's yeast there, i'll grab it for sure. just not sure how long to leave the oranges in there to give off any yeast they may have. thinking 48-72 hours...?

seeing as how people are only exposing their miniwort for a few hours to catch wild yeast, 24-48 hours might be much more than enough time for the yeast to take hold. I don't see what it could hurt leaving them in that long though.

it went 36 before i could pull them out knowing i had yeast... little floaties of nice clean white bubbles which rapidly expanded...

it's 1+ gallon of mostly just light DME, lightly hopped at about 1.044. its in mid-fermentation right now.

took a whiff of it, and i'd bet money its brett... smells like orval dregs. not fruity at all, but smells like wet sawdust or hay but clean. definite brett twangy smell to it. we'll see if this ferments into anything worthwhile, but i'm happy - took four tries to catch something and the good news is the fermentation started so cleanly, quickly and uniform i'm guessing if there even was anything weird in there, its gonna get overrun by this yeast... i've had longer lag times with starters.

I've been following this thread for a couple of months, but have just now gotten around to starting my own experiments. Left a YPD plate outside for a couple of hours yesterday (windy, high 40s/low 50s), and I'll know what grew in about a week. If nothing, then I'll try the DME-mason jar method that seems to work for everyone else. My thought was to see what I can catch on a petri dish, pick single colonies to make a series of half-pint starters, and then see how the decanted beers taste before scaling anything up to even a gallon batch.

Anyway, some links that I don't think came up in this thread yet:

There was an episode of Brewmasters covering DFH's attempt to hunt wild yeast in Egypt:

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/brew-masters-ancient-ale-videos/

And an interesting Google Books result suggesting a suitable medium for culturing Brett:

http://books.google.com/books?id=aWsF-e8tPzIC&q=brettanomyces#v=snippet&q=brettanomyces&f=false

2% malt extract
2% glucose
1.5% Agar
0.5% Calcium Carbonate (chalk)
0.1% mycological peptone (casein, whey, or even this (http://www.bragg.com/products/bragg-liquid-aminos-soy-alternative.html) will probably work if you don't have mycological peptone handy)

An open-source Masters Thesis about culturing and brewing with Brettanomyces:

http://www.brettanomycesproject.com/

went away for a couple of days and came home to a gorgeously fermenting gallon of brew with a nice 1/2" krausen on it still.

took another whiff again and i'm positive its brett and will ferment out nicely. nothing noticeably weird about it other than it smells incredibly funky.

i'm happy and not - really wasn't going for brett as i was really gunning for sacc so i could taste it quickly... this will have to age for a while - i'll let it ferment in primary for at least a month, let gravity stabilize and then bottle condition for at least several more months before i dare crack one open.

I tried this experiement sunday night. Monday morning I had what resembled yeast on the bottom of the jar. So I put it in my ferment area at 70 degrees and it started fermenting pretty good. Has a good tart kinda smell to it. Tonight I made a small starter so I can grow my culture and Ill try a wild wheat with it sometime soon.

Some pictures and notes from my attempt to capture DC microbes. Sunday I brewed five gallons of turbid mashed, aged hop, lambic wort and pitched about one quart from two of the three stepped up starters. Fermentation was going strong after 24 hours, smells good, but I won’t know for sure if the effort was worth it for awhile. I’m interested to see what the gravity gets down to after “primary” fermentation.

i like the boil length... nice!

my wild brew is still actively fermenting... 21 days, no drop in krausen, air lock is popping regularly, etc... just amazed.

Here are the details of my turbid mash brew. Just pulled my first sample last night (12 days in the fermenter) it was super tropical, bit of clove, and still really yeasty. I was surprised just how pleasant it was this young, not too far off a Hefeweizen fermented with a bit of Belgian yeast thrown in (and fermented a bit too warm).

curious as to how your lambic comes out... i racked my wild brett into secondary just so i could harvest the yeast because i'm going to make something with it, but the beer is rather "brett-y" to be honest. funky, sweaty, hay, etc... and at 64% attenuation, i'm not too excited about the prospect of the beer or the yeast. we'll see. been five weeks - thought i'd have seen a better AA. oh well.

jtakacs said:

thought i'd have seen a better AA. oh well.

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Hey, don't worry about the AA for now. You are probably one of the few people around here who hasn't contaminated their collection vessels with domesticated yeast.

Wild yeast are evolved to grow in tree sap and rotten fruit, so you wouldn't expect a wild strain to attenuate well, or even to taste good. Breweries spent hundreds of years selecting yeast for attenuation and taste. If you think that you set out a collection vessel and caught a wild yeast that attenuates to 75% AA with just a tinge of Brett...well, you probably have contamination with a domesticated strain.

I have a difficult enough time isolating the strains I catch and making sure they produce alcohol. Producing good flavors and good attenuation is really the second step, involving rounds of screening and selection.

On saturday nite I boiled 650ml of water and 1/2 cup of light DME in a 2000mL Erlenmeyer Flask covered with cheese cloth, temps that nite were in the 40 to 50 range. I set the starter next to an open window. The wind was blowing directly into the window.

By the next morning (yesterday) I noticed small bubbles around the edge of the liquid. So I removed the cheese cloth and covered with sanitized aluminum foil. I gave the flask a swirl about 5 times yesterday as I don't have a stir plate. Noticed more bubbles along the sides this am. No krausen yet.

Do you thinks overnite was long enough to get something started??

Cheers

Yes something probably has fallen in. You might not get krausen quick, the yeast might like to sit at the bottom and only later you will see some foam. If you have bubbles I would say that is a good sign.

I isolated 11 different yeast strains a month or so ago, tested if they could ferment maltose, and am fermenting 11 different gallon flasks with wort as we speak. The pre-cultures I grew in a shaker in small flasks in the lab I work in which is an advantage for me, I have all the means to do microscopy and culturing here. It was amazing to see the difference in how they behave in actual wort. Some of them form huge krausen, some sit at the bottom but you see a continues stream of bubbles, and in one case the fermenting wort turned so viscous it is almost jelly. Some ferment tremendously slow and a few started really late.

Hard to say what is going on right now I would just wait.

jaapie,

Thanks for the words of experience. RDWHAHB it is then. I'll report back later.

Cheers

drummstikk said:

Hey, don't worry about the AA for now. You are probably one of the few people around here who hasn't contaminated their collection vessels with domesticated yeast.

Wild yeast are evolved to grow in tree sap and rotten fruit, so you wouldn't expect a wild strain to attenuate well, or even to taste good. Breweries spent hundreds of years selecting yeast for attenuation and taste. If you think that you set out a collection vessel and caught a wild yeast that attenuates to 75% AA with just a tinge of Brett...well, you probably have contamination with a domesticated strain.

I have a difficult enough time isolating the strains I catch and making sure they produce alcohol. Producing good flavors and good attenuation is really the second step, involving rounds of screening and selection.

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took a turn for the uhhh... different?

sat for five weeks, gravity bottomed so i figured i'd rack it to a new container and harvest the yeast so i could reuse it. well, within days of it being in the new carboy, it formed a pellicle. i was thinking it could hit a bottle within a couple of months, but now it will hang for a while.. gorgeous pellicle too... really have to take some pictures.

howdy all, i also gave capturing wild yeast a try. I stuck a cup of apple juice in a mason jar out in the garden for about 6 hours, brought it inside and covered with foil, and let it sit on top of the fridge for about 10 days.

It started getting some nice bubbling and a sediment formed, smelled like tart apples. I pulled off the liquid with a turkey baster and added a cup of wort to the jar, it developed a nice looking krausen and started smelling estery and phenolic. Added another cup of wort, let that ferment for a few days, started smelling really really estery, lots of fruit and pepper, added another bit of wort to it and it started going fruity, peppery AND bubblegummy.

So i brewed up a batch of german hefeweizen and pitched about a liter of this starter, it took off and was cranking out some major odors. think rhino farts mixed with sour fruit.

Now i'm about 4 days in and the odors have died down, it's smelling very peppery and bubblegummy, a little tart. I had reserved a little bit of the started and built it up again, it looks like it's mostly fermented out today so I had a taste, very strong but pleasant yeast character.

woot!

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I accidently left a hydro sample on my counter from a wheat beer I brewed a week and a half back. I pitch dry yeast (mostly) and I am pretty anal about sanitary working conditions so I don't think I "accidently" added any yeast to the sample. Anyway, it fermented away like a champ and sorta smells like sour pears. I've boiled up some DME and pitched the slurry into 200 mL of wort to use eventually in a test batch after I grow it up to the right amount.

The question then: What area the odds this is something wild? I'm thinking it's probably one of the strains I use (I cycle through S-04, 05, and WB-06 on a regular basis), but it sure doesn't smell anything like any of them.

It's hard to say whether you have contamination of your domesticated strains without a control. When I collect wild yeast, I split my wort into two flasks. I open one to the atmosphere and leave the other closed. If I get fermentation in the closed flask, then I know the flask itself contained some yeast.

Even then, it's still possible to catch your own strains, if for example you ever dump yeast sediment in your garbage can (or even if you spill the beer in your glass) -- a fly can easily transfer your own strain back to your collecting flask.

If you do the control and collect at a different site than where you brew, I'd say you can be confident you've caught wild yeasts.

Another method, which I've recently given up on, is to collect straight onto a plate. You can be sure you don't have contamination with this method, but the problem is that most of the things that will grow on a plate are not good for brewing. You need some selection step first, such as growing in wort.

On the other hand, a combination of domesticated and wild stuff is just as interesting and tasty, so maybe just don't worry about it and enjoy!

I agree with Drumstikk, it is hard to say what it will be. If you brew a lot, you will be amazed what is flying around in your fermentation area just in the air.

To come to the plate topic, what I have done is collect yeast in wort, and then plate the fermenting wort on a plate with a spreader, and pick colonies like that. Of course you will miss the slow-growing micro-organisms, or organisms which do not like to grow on certain plate media (like Pediococcus and what not). But you gain a little more control.

I did this for 8 wild yeasts, and as a "control" took 3 pure strains i isolated from a Gueuze bottle. Two of them fermented pretty fast and smell/taste really nice. The other ones smell not very nice, although they are steadily fermenting, and taste like licking a wet-basement wall.

Either way, no worrying and enjoying the experiment is the way to go. If it tastes good, then it is a success.

I recently captured directly on to a plate, and selected 3 different colonies from that to grow up into starters. After a couple weeks of building them up to 1000ML, only one even had a good smell. I tasted them all, and the one tasted like a beer brewed with Notty, so I think my yeast was just in the air.
I'm using it anyway in a pale ale now, so we'll see how it goes. The rest tasted horrible!

drummerguysteve said:

I recently captured directly on to a plate, and selected 3 different colonies from that to grow up into starters. After a couple weeks of building them up to 1000ML, only one even had a good smell. I tasted them all, and the one tasted like a beer brewed with Notty, so I think my yeast was just in the air. I'm using it anyway in a pale ale now, so we'll see how it goes. The rest tasted horrible!

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I think I more intrigued by the ones that smell horrible at first...

Of course! I tried the horrible smelling starters, bit then they tastes horrible too.

I'm curious, I've been working on my 3rd and 4th generation juniper yeast, (top cropping, lagering, wheat, etc). At some point can I assume that there are no sour yeast/bacterium in it? I've not seen any evidence, with last count I've done 16 batches. If not, how can I be certain of this, outside of laboratory testing?

Edit: The reason I ask is that I'm contemplating sharing this yeast with "friends" for more help in testing, don't really want to infect anyone with something they don't want. I would think if I haven't had any infection, they wouldn't, but I know nothing of their sanitary practices, etc.

drummerguysteve said:

Of course! I tried the horrible smelling starters, bit then they tastes horrible too.

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How long did you wait? Wild yeast can ferment very slow, and can be an indication that you have something truly "wild".

The 8 wild guys I have going tasted horrendous a month ago, and ferment very slow. Now they taste actually much better. Early smell and taste might not be a good indicator of how things turn out in the end, but I do not know when you tasted them.

COLObrewer said:

I'm curious, I've been working on my 3rd and 4th generation juniper yeast, (top cropping, lagering, wheat, etc). At some point can I assume that there are no sour yeast/bacterium in it? I've not seen any evidence, with last count I've done 16 batches. If not, how can I be certain of this, outside of laboratory testing?

Edit: The reason I ask is that I'm contemplating sharing this yeast with "friends" for more help in testing, don't really want to infect anyone with something they don't want. I would think if I haven't had any infection, they wouldn't, but I know nothing of their sanitary practices, etc.

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If you did 16 batches I would say you would be safe. If you have not had any problems with bacteria all those times, and your friends all of a sudden going to have some, the problem might be on their end.

You cannot be certain what you have without doing laboratory testing, pouring plates, microscopy, plating etc. Also I do not know what laboratory testing really is, pouring plates and looking at colonies is quite basic for some, it is the same as changing oil in a car, for some people easy but for some it is hard.

You could have a nice consortium of organisms there which gives you the nice beer you like (different yeasts). If you try to isolate the single yeasts, you might end up with something different. But you might have a single yeast too. Hard to say.

Either way, tell them it is like an investment, there are some risks involved, albeit very small.

Does out side temperature matter? I live in the tropics, not the easiest place to brew. but would love to try this out.

jaapie said:

How long did you wait? Wild yeast can ferment very slow, and can be an indication that you have something truly "wild".

The 8 wild guys I have going tasted horrendous a month ago, and ferment very slow. Now they taste actually much better. Early smell and taste might not be a good indicator of how things turn out in the end, but I do not know when you tasted them.

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Only a couple weeks... Maybe I should have let them sit longer. I'll make a point to do that next time.

final update to this "experiment":

got around to tapping the wild patersbier keg last weekend, and took a pic of one of the first glasses. the beer has a sticky, fluffy head, slight fruit in the aroma, and a taste that is slightly earthy and phenolic with a little fruit in the finish.

as per the earlier discussion re: control vessels and harvesting locations, my sample was harvested away from where I ferment and the wort I used was boiled in the collecting flask for 10 minutes, so I have doubts that any of my previous commercial strains contributed here. that, and the yeast cake was unique in both color (white) and texture (flaky), for what it's worth...

ssf said:

another update - kegged the wild patersbier on friday. had a FG of 1.007 for an abv of 5.7%. tasted a small sample, which had some tasty (non-phenolic) esters, but no funk/sourness. saved the slurry for future use. will post more pics once I tap the keg.

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ssf said:

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Beautiful

That's a great looking beer. I'm going to try this yet again this weekend.

ssf,

That is freaking fantastic....that's a beautiful looking beer. I have yet to capture any wild yeast yet, I'm not giving up yet tho.

Agreed, that is a pretty beer! I'm still kicking around what base style to try with my "hometown wild yeast."

mhenry41h said:

Agreed, that is a pretty beer! I'm still kicking around what base style to try with my "hometown wild yeast."

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I've been kicking around the idea of putting some plates or some wort out at Strites Orchard off 322 near the East Shore Walmart/Sams on 322. They have cherry trees, apples and tons of other fruit. Should be a great place for getting yeast.

Recently I poured up a batch similar to Edwort's Apfelwein (it's going great). I had one gallon of apple juice left over, and did pop the top for a bit, but can't recall why. About a week later maybe I noticed the juice on the floor with the container so expanded it looked it would pop any second... plastic was stretched in spots.."scary."

I cracked it up to breath and figured I must have contaminated it with some yeast from the Apfelwein.. but it is behaving NOTHING like it, so I have no idea what got into the jug. It originally produced quite a bit of foam, and left some sludge on the side and seems much more calmed down.

I'm not sure if this is bacterial or what's in there. Any comments from the wealth of knowledge going around this thread would be great to hear. I figured I was going to toss the jug eventually and still probably, but this thread seems to great maybe I have something in there worth checking on more.

Thanks!

smokinghole said:

I've been kicking around the idea of putting some plates or some wort out at Strites Orchard off 322 near the East Shore Walmart/Sams on 322. They have cherry trees, apples and tons of other fruit. Should be a great place for getting yeast.

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That's a great idea! Back home in Juniata County, my family owns a hollow that I've hiked and hunted on since I was a kid. There is a natural spring at the foot of the mountain so I'm considering taking some wort up there and letting it sit at the spring for the day. In the evening I'll get some water from the spring and hopefully some wild yeast! A sentimental beer!

I live on a 100+ year old farm, lots of unused barns, animal shelters, old attics etc that haven't been used since the 60's - should be lots of wild yeast floating around I reckon. Next time I brew I'll place some jars all over the place.

smokinghole said:

I've been kicking around the idea of putting some plates or some wort out at Strites Orchard off 322 near the East Shore Walmart/Sams on 322. They have cherry trees, apples and tons of other fruit. Should be a great place for getting yeast.

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The only caution I'd mention is that if they use any fungicide in their spray program, provided that they have a spray/pesticide program, that is, you probably won't be getting anything along the lines that you may want or think should be there. You may instead find that bacteria are more prominent, especially acetobacter. Most fungicide applications are by season, and not always the same product each season. Yeasts get killed along with the other stuff. Just a thought. Might be worth asking them, and maybe even getting a short ways upwind of the prevailing wind direction and you may have better results, IDK.

I'm learning to catch wild yeast along with the rest of all of us. I am no expert, but I'm a biology grad student, and I think we should be thinking of yeast as something that doesn't exactly float around in the air or hide out in old barns.

Instead, I think we should really think of it as a bug that travels from one source of natural sugar to another. Mostly, Saccharomyces has been found in nature around hardwood trees that have been leaking sweet sap, and on sweet fruits and fruit flies. It certainly has some spores in the air, no doubt. But a much more significant source of wild yeast will be the insects that are naturally attracted to very sweet things.

For example, you leave your wort outside overnight. Any type of insect that visits your wort is the type that loves sugar. It will also have just visited any other rotting fruit in your neighborhood, and maybe any sweet tree sap that is exposed, bathing in the wild yeast growing there. It will bring all those yeast, along with a ton of bacteria, to your wort.

This doesn't mean that if you put a fine mesh over your wort that it won't ferment. Yeast make spores for a reason -- so they can survive drying out. Surely there is yeast in the wind. I just think that prime yeast-catching habitats are probably those near orchards in the Fall when fruit is ripe, and hardwood forests in the spring when the sweet sap is high.

Sorry for the total lack of evidence -- this is just my opinion and I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong if someone has looked into it more carefully!

Well drummstickk, your logic sure seems good!