Natural Leaven; from beer to bread (please critique)

Okay, so first, I am VERY aware of how ambitious this project is. I am also aware that there is a very high possibility of utter failure and really nasty "beer" that will not be fun to choke down. But I did read one thread where someone was successful, so I'm going to try it.

Here's what I want to do. I have a natural leaven starter I've been cultivating for bread for just about four weeks. I've baked bread with it, and it is not, strictly speaking, a sourdough at all. It is, if anything, almost characterless. This is good news for making a beer yeast, methinks. Because I'm pretty sure the yeast character that does come out in the bread will be much stronger in a beer.

So, tomorrow when I bake some bread, I'm going to take a couple of tablespoons of the leaven and add it to a ready DME beer starter at 1.032, 70F, and put an airlock on it. When this ferments all the way out, I'll cold shock it until there's a dense yeast bed, decant the top, and pitch that in another starter at the same gravity and temp. I'll do that probably 5 or 6 times and then start upping the gravity to around 1.060. Just a few points at a time though, over the course of a couple of months.

Finally, a couple of weeks before brewday, I'm going to make a simple "beer" with DME and some cheap hops, just to make sure it can handle living with hops. If it tastes weird, I might do it again.

The length of the whole process is going to depend on my nose and my gut, and when I think it's ready, I'm going to make a very bready beer, as part of my series of beers exploring the relationship between beer and bread.

I'll go into more details about the beer itself in another thread.

Does anyone know of a really good reason why this won't work? Does anyone know what kinds of esthers and aromas this type of yeast might contribute? I was "trying" to get the yeast for the bread to be less sour smelling and more sweet, and it seems to have worked, but I really couldn't tell you what I did to get that result, or if I just got lucky. Could I expect the same luck converting it to beer?

Couple of things. IT matters a lot how you made the initial bread starter. Did you use the natural stuff on the flour? If so, you're going to have a lot of lactic acid bacteria... maybe a good thing, maybe not. It isn't likely to be a good yeast on the flour.

I make a bit of bread too. I haven't followed the entire process for rustic yet, but I suggest finding a copy of the Tartine bread book in a store and read the first bit a few times. Very good info. Best I've read from a practical standpoint so far.

Even if you could isolate just the yeast, it would likely not make as good a beer as the yeast as the stuff you buy....

I have the Tartine book! The bakery is not far from my house! Awesome reference. I'm really not counting on the yeast being better than white labs or anything. All I want is a beer that is expressively reminiscent of bread. I want a lot of character.

Will the yeast naturally dominate the bacteria and such over a long period of constant feeding, or do they symbiote the entire way through? I definitely don't want too much character.

Ah ha, didn't notice you had sf in your sig. I'm right across the bay from you then! I haven't made beer from yeast other than purchased stuff, so I'm not totally sure, but I think that yeast and wild flora gives bread it's nice character because it is in the dough as a growth medium, and that it wouldn't give the same character with wort as a growth medium. I've always though of Belgians as 'liquid bread.' Perhaps some dark munich and victory malt could get you close to what you want. Ofests are pretty breaddy (crust melanoidin) imo.

One contributer to bread character is the climate, one reason sf makes some of the best breads in the world, but the starter source (and the flour for leaven and bread too of course) matters too. OT, but try to get some masa organics flour if you can find it at a farmers market. They have it at the berkeley one. It makes a WAY better starter than the king arthur stuff.

I'd think you would reach there would be some balancing/symbiosis after some time. That has happened in breweries historically. The question is, will it be making good beer at that point?

Thanks StMarcos! Good looking out on the flour. I've been trying different flours and haven't settled on anything yet.

You also hit on my secret best-case-scenario hope. I think it would be awesome if this yeast works out and then I keep it alive and turn it into a unique proprietary strain... That's a pipe dream I'm sure.

Keep brewing in the bay area! And thanks for the response. I'll post how things work out.

http://sourdoughmonkeywrangler.blogspot.com/2009/03/sourdough-blonde.html
Local blogger in the east bay did it before with decent results apparently. There is an issue in that some wild yeasts aka C. milleri don't metabolize maltose, and this is supposed to be the predominant strain for the traditional SF starter. I did an experiment with my starter that's lived in both Daly City and SF and didn't especially like the results.

I'm a baker and bakery owner. If you really don't mind the large possibility of utter failure, I think this is a fun experiment. Personally, I don't feel like wasting the beer ingredients.

Because of the youth of your levain culture (that's how it's spelled), and the fact that you feel it has very little flavor, I wouldn't expect too much. But it's weird that at four weeks old you don't have much flavor - have you been refrigerating it or something?

Flour is covered in wild yeast and bacteria, especially whole grain flour. You definitely will not have a pure culture there. Expect some sort of lambic-like fermentation (and possibly construct your recipe like a lambic) but seriously, I think your chances of producing a world class beer are slim, and even making something decent is pretty low.

Leave the wild beasties for sourdough I say!

kanzimonson said:

I'm a baker and bakery owner. If you really don't mind the large possibility of utter failure, I think this is a fun experiment. Personally, I don't feel like wasting the beer ingredients.

Because of the youth of your levain culture (that's how it's spelled), and the fact that you feel it has very little flavor, I wouldn't expect too much. But it's weird that at four weeks old you don't have much flavor - have you been refrigerating it or something?

Flour is covered in wild yeast and bacteria, especially whole grain flour. You definitely will not have a pure culture there. Expect some sort of lambic-like fermentation (and possibly construct your recipe like a lambic) but seriously, I think your chances of producing a world class beer are slim, and even making something decent is pretty low.

Leave the wild beasties for sourdough I say!

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I agree that the levain (thanks for the spell correct) is strange in that it is already so mellow. I'm chalking that up to good luck. The starter lives at a pretty steady 68 degrees and I feed it daily.

More or less, this is only intended as a fun experiment. If the brew starter smells too funky and doesn't mellow out after successive feeding I'll abandon ship with minimal heart breakage.

But I'm a fan of lambics and geuzes, so if it does that, not the end of the world. I'm about to start the process now, so here goes nothing!

I would expect you're at least going to end up with a very cloudy beer due to the flour. I agree it's pretty weird that it's not sour at all given how old it is. Personally I like a bit of sour bite in mine.

weirdboy said:

I would expect you're at least going to end up with a very cloudy beer due to the flour. I agree it's pretty weird that it's not sour at all given how old it is. Personally I like a bit of sour bite in mine.

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I also like my bread a little sour as well. Which is why I'm starting the beer starter now. Once I have them separated I can make the levain more sour while keeping the beer starter mild.

The flour will be long gone by the time I use it in a beer though.

So if you're really talking about making a starter with this, you will definitely know whether or not you have something that can ferment maltose, and also you'll find out if you have lacto (which I'm almost definitely sure you will). If you taste the starter and it's sour, that will be a great indication.

Otherwise, I would say go for it. The worst thing that will happen is you will make terrible beer! Just do a 1 gallon batch or something and you won't feel that bad about wasting less than 10 dollars or so.

Thanks devilishprune. The starter is already set up. Just waiting to see what happens. We'll know in a few days. But regardless, I'm going to feed this several times before I use it, and I'll be discarding a lot each time so HOPEFULLY it won't be too heavy on lactobaccilus or any of that stuff I never spell quite right.

So, the starter has almost fermented all the way out. I'm going to feed it again on Thursday, so I'll let you know how it smells (possibly how it tastes of it isnt too funky.

It'll be interesting to see how this turns out! FYI, I've kept levain cultures alive for years at a time and never had more than a very mild sour flavour manifest itself. Nothing wrong with that, I say - the long fermentation times unlocks all of that hidden wheaty sweetness and the mild sour adds just a hint of complexity. My everyday sandwich loaf is naturally leavened - you'd never know it was a sourdough (because it isn't a sour dough), but it's a tasty bite nonetheless.

Levain ? What are we now controlled by the French?

Sorry but Leaven is perfectly acceptable.

One of my old Sourdough starters smells just like wine, so if I wanted I could surely use it for making wine or beer, but I leave that to the OP to experiment.

btw - Sourdough has nothing to do with sour, and you might be able to coax some sour out by lengthening your dough ferment. I routinely go 24 hours room temp and then anywhere from 2-7 days in the fridge. By the end of 4-5 days you can bake a pretty sour loaf, which really comes through if you let the finished loaf sit for a few hours before eating.

This is kind of unrelated to yeast, but my girlfriend uses the spent grains from my mash to make pizza dough and it is unreal good, doesn't add much flavor but the texture is fantastic

Ok, so I repitched the yeast in a new starter at 1.070. It wasn't supposed to be that high, but its handling it. There is definitely a large amount of lactobaccilus, because the starter was very sour. Mouth puckeringly so. If that doesn't mellow out over time, I might just use it to make a lambic or a geuze or finish a beer with it to give it a hint of sourness. Either way, I'm going to keep moving forward with it.