Howto: Capture Wild Yeast

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Thanks. Just doing my part to ease the gender disparity and put men back on the map in children's lives (beyond their dads/coaches).

Yeah, you could call it offensive actually. I bring a bottle out here and there during tastings to see peoples faces turn green. Although some people like it - and it gets better with aging (these beers are not drinkable fresh basically). Maybe Limburger cheese is a good comparison - not for everybody, lol.
Sounds like a cheese I need to try. I like cheese.

Definitely less than the Pichia beers. Although, one strain just keeps on chewing through, you know the bottles become all gushers after a month or two. Ill make sure Ill let you know how this other stuff turns out.
Thanks. I'd be keen to do a yeast swap some time. My Australian backyard microzoo for a couple of your Sacchs, if you wanted to. You could probably isolate hundreds of things from it, and be the only guy at your club with Aussie yeast.
 
bottling my wild today... it's only a small amount but last time i tried it, it was like drinking wet hay...

i think i've kicked my wild yeast fetish. i love brett beers, but this is over the top.
 
bottling my wild today... it's only a small amount but last time i tried it, it was like drinking wet hay...

i think i've kicked my wild yeast fetish. i love brett beers, but this is over the top.

Give it some time, rather than tipping it out. It will be easy to stick it in your basement and forget about it since it's filthy now, but jaapie made a Pichia beer which apparently smelled like mouse poo and things, but aging softened the character a bit. You may like (tolerate?) the aged product more.
 
certainly not pitching it... it will go in bottles this weekend (never got to it yesterday) and put down for a while...
 
certainly not pitching it... it will go in bottles this weekend (never got to it yesterday) and put down for a while...

Good idea, it will be interesting to see the taste will develop. You might have to wait long, over a year perhaps, or maybe more. These beers attenuate really low.

@Caleb, pm me your address and Ill have some yeasts on your way. I am traveling now, but will be back home at the end of this month.
 
This isn't exactly the same thing but as sourcing of them is semi related, has anyone came across any bacteria that improved the flavor of a batch? I came across only one that was remotely interesting while doing one of my open fermented batches (i like the taste it adds personally). I did get another batch off with bottle dregs that came out the same but my wife used them all for beer/margaritas and I've not been lucky enough with subsequent batches to get the same. Came out with a hint of acid and tartness.
 
I finally brewed mine today. Did a micro-saison. I decanted the starter and tasted it. Tastes very saison like. A little lemony and over ripe fruit. Mouthfeel was a bit silky. Also had a bit of sourness and funk to it. Its also very active. Only a 6 hour lag time.
 
Homebrewtastic said:
Tastes very saison like. A little lemony and over ripe fruit. Mouthfeel was a bit silky.

I've never tried a saison, but if that's what it tastes like, it sounds like I need to get my hands on a bottle!
 
Does anyone know of you can send caught wild yeast somewhere to get it separated for the bacteria and other unwanted yeasts?
 
Just set out 8 150ml jars of wort, and 1 700ml jar, for 18 hours overnight uncovered. Real low gravity, didn't get a chance to measure. Going to let it go for a few weeks and see if any smell/taste good, if so, then I will step them up. They were set out around a 192 yr old farmhouse, near gardens, trees, honeysuckle, blueberry, and raspberry bushes. Hoping to get some good wild yeast and use that fruit for a real local farmhouse ale. We are also about to plant some hops. Can't wait. 2 jars were in original basement, but i'm pretty sure i'll just get mold from those. It was pretty humid down there and parts were wet, but figured it was worth setting 2 down there.
 
This thread inspired me to go out and try to catch some wild yeast (and finally register for HBT).

I mixed up a small batch of wort at about 1.020-1.030 ish, boiled for about 15 minutes with some pellet hops mixed in. I also squeezed a bit of lemon into it after reading the advice here about lowering the PH. The wife and I went camping out at Deception Pass in the northwestern part of Washington state. Looks kinda like this:

deceptionPass.jpg


I separated the wort into two tupperware containers and left one on the table at the campsite and the other on a stump underneath a tree. They sat out for about 6 hours or so at about 50-55 degrees.

So they've been sitting out on top of the fridge for about a week now. It's hard to tell what I've got exactly. The wort smells alright with a bit of a sourness, in the last couple of days I've started to see some bubbles and now there seems to be a film starting to grow on top. No sign of mold yet. Here are some pics:

wildYeast_01.jpg


wildYeast_02.jpg


Pretty fun experiment, hopefully I ended up getting some yeast. :mug:
 
wild went in bottles today - last i had tasted it, it was overwhelming brett. the base beer is a basic wheat, bittered to 17 bus and when i tasted it, i was shocked. the brett is very much front and center, but it drinks like a wheat orval. very light, delicate, very complex. i'm really looking forward to this being ready.

the yeast moved 2 points with the additional 6 months and wound up at 85% attenuation... i have this yeast captured and i'll use it again when i brew something belgian-y...

all in a all a great beer day - bottled my caramel sour that was 100% soured with a house cultured bug blend. it came out incredible and is at the moment (uncarbed and room temp) the best sour i've ever had - gorgeous bright red color, absolutely clear and a fantastic mouthfeel - not much sour, very delicate, but i suspect it'll change in the bottle over time.

by far the best beer forum going - thanks guys, i've learned a lot here - it's allowed me to drink really good and unique beer.
 
Hi I'm thread starter.

Just wanted to stop by and let people know I'm still around, and I'm so happy to see all the neat, cool stuff people have been doing because of this thread.

Happy brewing and bug collecting :mug:
 
Made and streaked two plates with my big wild yeast culture a few days ago.

25mL dry wheat malt extract
250mL water
30mL gelatin

15mL honey
0.5mL yeast nutrient
250mL water
30mL gelatin

The honey one became a goopy mountainous mess that I didn't feel like trying to isolate anything from, but the wheat one kept its form quite well. I will be scooping up as many single blob colonies as I can and then restreaking each onto a new plate.
 
Attached is an image I took from my iPad.

Ingredients:
25mL dry wheat malt extract
250mL water
30mL gelatin
and around about 4 days. Check yours each day for fast-breeding colonies, if that's a feature you're selecting for.

image-2918582.jpg
 
I scooped up five blobs of yeast and put each into jars of 1:10 wort, shook like a mofo and will check on them tomorrow morning.
 
How does the culture smell?

It doesn't smell like whole lot honestly. Mostly sour, a bit sweet. Not unlike I would imagine wort left sitting out for a while.

It's been a week and a half, so the yeast should be starting to take over around now (right?). There is some white powdery looking stuff sitting around the bottom of the tupperware and a white ring around the wort line (mold?). There is an interesting pinkish red glob floating in the other sample, not really sure what that is but it sure grosses the wife out. :D

I was thinking about making a half gallon starter and tossing both of my samples in just to see what happens. I figure at least I'll be able to take a gravity reading so I'll know if I'm getting any fermentation action.

Speaking of which......how long should I wait before taking a reading? From what I've gathered these wild yeast (if I do in fact have any) can take a while to chew through the sugar.
 
Hi I'm thread starter.

Just wanted to stop by and let people know I'm still around, and I'm so happy to see all the neat, cool stuff people have been doing because of this thread.

Happy brewing and bug collecting :mug:

Awesome to see the OP is still around. Great thread man! :mug:
 
It doesn't smell like whole lot honestly. Mostly sour, a bit sweet. Not unlike I would imagine wort left sitting out for a while.

It's been a week and a half, so the yeast should be starting to take over around now (right?). There is some white powdery looking stuff sitting around the bottom of the tupperware and a white ring around the wort line (mold?). There is an interesting pinkish red glob floating in the other sample, not really sure what that is but it sure grosses the wife out. :D

I was thinking about making a half gallon starter and tossing both of my samples in just to see what happens. I figure at least I'll be able to take a gravity reading so I'll know if I'm getting any fermentation action.

Speaking of which......how long should I wait before taking a reading? From what I've gathered these wild yeast (if I do in fact have any) can take a while to chew through the sugar.

Wild yeast haven't been any slower at eating in my own experience. If it's a bit sour, you might have a bacterial infection. Also the things floating ontop are quite likely to be mould. The stuff at the bottom could be yeast that have finished doing their thing and have floculated. I would suggest tipping the wort out carefully, while trying to keep the white powdery stuff on the bottom, then put some fresh hopped (to discourage bacteria) wort on top of the powdery stuff and shake it all up.
 
Update!

I think I inoculated one of the 5 jars of 1:10 barley/wheat extract wort with two different strains, because I scooped 5 colonies off the plate, and one of them never fermented, and one of them fermented quickly with some funny smells that may have been two colonies fighting each other or something.

I poured off all the wort into a bottle with some caraway seeds to make some malt vinegar, including the double- and un-inoculated wort, while reserving the flocculated yeast in the 3 single colony jars.

Then I bumped it up a notch to try end squeeze out some fusels (and therefore esters) by using 2:10 barley/wheat extract wort (5% potential) and by not oxygenating the wort beforehand.

They're fermenting away and one jar in particular smells of banana and honey. I didn't even know there was a beer ester that could smell like honey. I sincerely hope it's not just the jar smells, but the jar was dishwashed and then sanitized in iodophor, so theoretically it should be okay. The other two jars have esters, but not as nice as the first jar. Will continue my experiments with 3:10 wort next up, once the wort has cleared up and been tasted.

EDIT: For some reason I can't smell banana anymore. Mostly honey.
 
They're fermenting away and one jar in particular smells of banana and honey. I didn't even know there was a beer ester that could smell like honey. I sincerely hope it's not just the jar smells, but the jar was dishwashed and then sanitized in iodophor, so theoretically it should be okay. The other two jars have esters, but not as nice as the first jar. Will continue my experiments with 3:10 wort next up, once the wort has cleared up and been tasted.

That sounds great, honey and banana! I have never smelled anything like that, that is very interesting. I am curious how it will do in the heavier wort
 
That sounds great, honey and banana! I have never smelled anything like that, that is very interesting. I am curious how it will do in the heavier wort

(I'll boil/sanitize the containers you send your yeast in and then send my guys back in them.)

Starter #1: EDIT: After finishing off fermentation, then flocculating, then swirling a bit, I can again pick up some scents that are vaguely reminiscent of banana and a reasonably prominent honey aroma (my father now detects honey and cinnamon, but no banana), so it's nowhere near a Weizen yeast but it could still make an interesting Wild Weizen, or Wilderweizen if you will. When cold, my parents and I can detect subtle hints of mango, passionfruit and peach. It's the nicest of the bunch by far.

Starter #2: Has a slightly medicinal, eucalyptus scent. This one happens to have the lid from a honey jar, but again, it's been dishwashed and sanitized so I sincerely hope it's not just jar/lid I'm smelling. EDIT: After finishing off fermentation, then flocculating, then swirling a bit, it's still not really that pleasant. The bubbles on top are sort of clumping together in a weird way different from the other jars, so it may be infected. When cooled overnight, it's got some lemony scents, combined with a yeasty/doughy presence that reminds me of sourdough. Not very offensive, but not very interesting.

Starter #3: Has a scent I can't quite put my finger on. It's not really pleasant, and it might be the "band-aid" smell that I keep hearing about, but more research is needed. EDIT: After finishing off fermentation, then flocculating, then swirling a bit, it's still not really that pleasant. Nor is it pleasant after cooling; smells like egg and dill and doesn't taste very good.

The next step will probably be to make 10L of Weizen wort, then inoculate half with the first/nice wild yeast and the other half with some WB-06 I've got in the fridge. I'll make starters for both.

Q: anybody have suggestions for naming this yeast?
I was thinking something simple like "BH-01", BH meaning banana/honey. To be a bit more boring/organised, I could call all the successful isolations in my area LBM (Lower Blue Mountains, where I live), so LBM-01.
 
Okay, I think I'm done editing that previous post. Next post will be about the Weizen experiment; if not, I'll edit things into this post.
 
I just submitted an article on spontaneous American fermentation to BYO with some tips I got from the brewers at Allagash, Russian River, Jolly Pumpkin, and Cambridge Brewing. Lots of interesting stuff.

My batch is about a year old and still not especially sour, hoping the bacteria get kicked into gear as it warms up this spring. I used some as the base for a gueuze I submitted to NHC blended with a few beers that had enough sourness, but not the aromatic complexity of this beer.

The mulberries on my tree are starting to come out, but they won't be ripe for a couple months, hoping to harvest enough to do 2 lbs/gallon on half the batch. The added sugars should give it some extra sourness too.
 
Quick update on my part:

I was just about to boil up some new wort as Pith suggested. But when I checked in on the wort I had all kinds of action going on.

wildYeast_03.jpg


wildYeast_04.jpg


Heyo! Lots of bubbles with some oil slick looking stuff as well. I'm wondering if I should just leave it be and let it do its thing. It's also worth noting that this sample of wort is much lighter in color then my other one.

wildYeast_05.jpg


Not much action going on in that one, glad I took two samples. I left one on the table and one underneath a tree at the campsite. I didn't label them but I'm betting the one on the left is the tree sample.

I get some heat on the nose when I smell the active sample, although I hope its not just my imagination. :)
 
It really looks like you have a lot more than just yeast there. It MAY be Brett creating that pellicle, but it seems FAR to early for Brett to be popping by your wort. It's probably something you don't want. Again, I would tip it off the yeast pack and make some more, but you'll probably have to do it with a fairly acidic/bitter wort a few times to prevent the reappearance of moulds/bacteria.

You could try to isolate some strains like I did, see the last couple of pages.
 
Interesting article looking at the microbes working in an American spontaneous fermentation compared to Belgian lambics: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0035507

The take away is that all of the same families and many of the same species are involved, and the fermentations follow similar patterns, although there are some subtle differences. It is what I expected, but it is nice to have some science backing it up.
 
Interesting article looking at the microbes working in an American spontaneous fermentation compared to Belgian lambics: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0035507

The take away is that all of the same families and many of the same species are involved, and the fermentations follow similar patterns, although there are some subtle differences. It is what I expected, but it is nice to have some science backing it up.

Interesting. So will we see "American Coolship Ale" as the new (highly marketable!) terminology to supplant American (p)Lambic?
 
I started my side-by-side hefeweizen yeast comparison, one using WB-06 and the other using the previously described yummy wild strain. A visual analysis of the flocculated starter jars indicated that there was almost exactly the same amount of yeast in each. Unfortunately I forgot I was only doing 2.5 gallons and put a whole ounce of Hallertauer in, so it's probably more bitter than it needs to be. After the boil, the volume in each jar appears to be about 4L, or just over a gallon.

550gm Wheat DME @ 0 mins
200gm Light DME @ 60 mins
1 oz. Hallertauer @ 60 mins
potential 5%

Pitched at midnight. Measured exactly 15ml of gin for each senior airlock. The low pitching rate and lack of oxygenation should hopefully contribute to ester production. In this experiment I will mainly focus on CO2 production, since that involves no interfering with fermentation through gravity checks. The following is a comparison of bubble time intervals; WB-06 followed by wild yeast.

8 hours in: 8 seconds, 12 seconds.
16 hours in: 7.5 seconds, 7 seconds.
21 hours in: 9.5 seconds, 6 seconds.
32 hours in: 12 seconds, 9 seconds.
37 hours in: 16 seconds, 45 seconds. No typo.

Analysis: the commercial strain demonstrates a quicker start to CO2 production. I'm not sure if that correlates exactly with alcohol production and therefore fermentation speed, but its certainly related. Perhaps the only thing we can infer so far is that the wild yeast took a while to catch up, though admittedly the pattern of the commercial yeast does not look like it would have reached 6 seconds. Next time I think I'll check every 3 hours, just to be sure.

Krausen almost completely dissipated from wild one at 37 hours. Taste test at this point showed that the commercial yeast gives off esters more readily, and that the wild one does not have the esters previously described, but has some of the less pleasant (but not unpleasant) flavours I've come to associate with a higher gravity wort for this yeast. Perhaps I calculated gravity at the wrong temperature.

Next time, I will test it on an English Bitter wort against another commercial strain, will check gravity the morning after brewing before pitching yeast, will take bubble intervals every three hours after pitching, if my schedule allows.

4 days in (I think?) and it's slowed right down. Both were at 1.014 yesterday, and the commercial was still going slowly at that point, so it'll probably finish a tad drier than the wild one. The wild one has flocc'd a fair bit though, while the commercial one, in hefe style, is not flocculating much at all.
 
So, in summary, the wild yeast is slow to get started, then hurries his way through, but doesn't finish the job. Like a lazy boy.

Can't wait to get my "Lazy English Boy's Bitter" started.

EDIT: Actually it appears to have attenuated to pretty much the same extent as the WB-06 has, so it's still a low attenuation yeast, but not as low as to be "lazy".
 
This thread is awesome!!! I plan on trying this asap. I think I'll leave one jar by the bilco doors in my musty basement and another by an open window in my kitchen.
 
reusing my banked wild yeast today... doing an all brett saison and am going to split the batch between commercial brett and the wild brett.

starter is cranking away, this yeast is hungry.
 
image-724968440.jpg

So I'm three days in and I have this pellicle forming. Is it good or bad? Also I noticed a couple tiny dots on the top. Is that mold?
 
jrm59 said:
<img src="https://www.homebrewtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=60828"/>

So I'm three days in and I have this pellicle forming. Is it good or bad? Also I noticed a couple tiny dots on the top. Is that mold?

Looks like part of the pellicle. Your pellicle could mean lots of things. Let it ride.
 
You reminded me of a thread I wanted to post, which I just did. Let us know if the starter ends up tasting funky (or fruity, or whatever) in an unusual way that a pellicle-forming yeast wouldn't cause; I'm wondering if mould can positively contribute to a beer in a similar way to Biere de Garde.
 
I will definitely update throughout the process! Since yesterday, the pellicle has thickened up and it smells like feet with a hint of sour milk...
 
Ok so this is the pellicle on day 4.


image-3917556354.jpg

You can't really see it in the picture, but there is a tiny grey-ish, mold-resembling dot on the top. Opinions? If I should try to skim it out, does anyone have a good technique of how to do that out of a flask?
 
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