Howto: Capture Wild Yeast

merkinman said:

This is what happens (from Lambic by Guinard):

(3 to 7 days) Enteric Bacteria and Kloeckera Apiculata
(2 weeks) Saccharomyces
(3 to 4 months) Lactic Acid Bacteria
(8 months) Brettanomyces plus Pichia, Candida, Hansenula and Cryptococcus

As for why it would be helpful to decant now, that was my question. My thoughts were that it may be better to remove the yeast from the other bacteria in the jug (knowing that I cannot completely separate it), or to leave it in there for at least two weeks (per above source) to see if the saccharomyces completely takes over and reduces the stink.

I am favoring leaving it since the others who had success on this thread seem to have left it alone for at least that long.

Click to expand...

I know the time schedule you are referring to now I understand how you came to this two weeks though. As you can also see between the two weeks and the 3 to 4 months there is a big gap in time. This schedule is for Lambic and probably has some similarity to your experiment, but it might well be different time-wise.

Sure separate it out if you want to use this yeast for your second ferment, nice experiment. You might still end up with bad smell but it might be less. But you might destroy a perfect beer that just needs more time to heal. What was the gravity, and where are you now?

jaapie said:

Sure separate it out if you want to use this yeast for your second ferment, nice experiment. You might still end up with bad smell but it might be less. But you might destroy a perfect beer that just needs more time to heal. What was the gravity, and where are you now?

Click to expand...

Good points. I was intending to capture this to use in another fuller batch of beer (there is only about .5 a gallon in the jug now), and I do suppose if I wanted to let that little bit run the course to drink, I would be premature in removing the beer.

O.G. - 1.051
Now - 1.004 :rockin:

I agree that there really is not much need in decanting.

drummstikk said:

This is consistent with contamination by a domesticated strain from your brewery. Did you do unopened controls to make sure you're not just growing WLP001?

Click to expand...

No, but I did everything in the house on the property I set it out. No one in recent history has brewed there. I used his pot to boil in, and my new sanitized jars. Is it possible someone a hundred years ago fermented something down there? Sure. It's all an experiment to see what I get.

I finally tasted the 4 jars I stepped up. Sorry I can't provide more detail but they are very hard to describe.

Jar 4(near raspberry bush): Pretty tart, fruity, almost cider like.
Jar 6(under large tree on side porch): Pretty basic. Tastes like a different kind of beer. Something I can't pinpoint. Still good though.
Jar 8(cellar room 1): Slightly fruity, slightly rustic, tastes like a different kind of beer as well. Not tart but I could see it developing more.
Jar 9(cellar room 2): Fairly tart, a little fruity and rustic. Not cider-like.

I also brewed 2 5gal batches with Jar 6 in one and Jar 9 in the other. It was a loosely based on my Kentucky Common, but lighter, and with some wheat, and a little late hop action - very little. It was fermenting strong 12 hours later when I checked on it. Going to let it go a couple more weeks then sample and test the gravity. I'll bottle when it's done, whenever that may be. Going to brew 2 more batches with the other 2 jars hopefully soon.

I'm having a lot of trouble isolating anything to send to jaapie in this wet Australian winter... I don't know how the Belgians do it for their lambics. But it sounds like you've gotten some interesting results, ODaniel. Maybe in spring I'll do something similar, build the starters up along with a few "neutral" ale strains, and when I have an almost-the-same amount of yeast in each (may be easier said than done), I'll do an identical batch of each.

Pith said:

I'm having a lot of trouble isolating anything to send to jaapie in this wet Australian winter... I don't know how the Belgians do it for their lambics. But it sounds like you've gotten some interesting results, ODaniel. Maybe in spring I'll do something similar, build the starters up along with a few "neutral" ale strains, and when I have an almost-the-same amount of yeast in each (may be easier said than done), I'll do an identical batch of each.

Click to expand...

No worries Pith. I have had lots of batches I needed to dump since it seemed a cat drowned in them, that much mold was in there. Its totally dependent on so many factors. I have had better luck in very warm weather, some people actually say that that is a bad idea, but for me it seemed to give the best results.

So I was going to try this out and I got to thinking that maybe I should put a layer of cheese cloth over the jar when trying to catch yeast. I have a lot of bug outside and it's just too damn hot to leave the windows open. I wouldn't think cheese cloth would prevent yeast from getting to the sugar would it?

At 3 weeks in, the 2 5gal batches (Jar 6 and 9) are down to 1.010 from 1.050, 80% attentuation. They smell good but I did not sample. Going to let them go a little longer and then sample and probably bottle, then brew 10gal more and split between the other 2 jars. I'm pretty surprised on the attenuation so far. Can't wait to get these all packaged and share from time to time - seeing how they progress.

Hey all — I'm a long-time reader of this thread, and thoroughly enjoy it. Great work, team! As many of you probably are as well, I'm a sourdough baker, and I've always been curious about where, exactly, wild yeast+bacteria come from, and how they get into our dough/wort/must. From the baker's hands? Malt dust? Breeze? Some folks here have suggested the bacteria is bug-borne, and I just saw on NPR some reinforcement of that theory. Here's the link.

And the gist:

Cavalieri and his colleagues discovered that these hornets and wasps bite the grapes and help start the fermentation while grapes are still on the vines.They do that by spreading a yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae — commonly known as brewer's yeast and responsible for wine, beer and bread fermentation — in their guts. When the wasps bite into the fruit, they leave some of that yeast behind.

Click to expand...

Thought you would be interested!

"Evolutionary biologist Anne Pringle of Harvard, who was not involved in the study, says the findings have two strong messages: Great wines need bugs and people still know almost nothing about ecology."

I think the case for beer yeasts being transporter by insects is even weaker -- nearly nonexistent. I've never seen any experiment that tested the idea.

It just makes sense, though. While it is possible that a yeast spore would be blown by the wind into your wort, it seems much more likely that it would be brought there by a sugar-loving insect. Wind is a random process, while certain insects will seek out sugar sources all day every day.

Let's say that you created an artificial lake, and a few months later you notice that it is teeming with fish. Did the fish eggs get in the lake by blowing there, or did they hitch a ride in the feathers of some bird that came to the lake to bathe and drink? Both are possible, but doesn't the bird explanation seem much more likely?

This is why I am always wondering why people are putting cheesecloth over their wort when they want to inoculate it with wild yeast. It seems like you would bias yourself toward getting the yeast you want if you let some insects get in there.

drummstikk said:

This is why I am always wondering why people are putting cheesecloth over their wort when they want to inoculate it with wild yeast. It seems like you would bias yourself toward getting the yeast you want if you let some insects get in there.

Click to expand...

It is my understanding that flies carry many of the less desireable species (acetobacter, mold etc.). A good reason not to let them into your wort.

Oldsock said:

It is my understanding that flies carry many of the less desireable species (acetobacter, mold etc.). A good reason not to let them into your wort.

Click to expand...

I have heard that before as well, and maybe flies don't usually carry Saccharomyces, but is it true in general that insects only bring stuff we don't want?

Nope. Here's a story about recent research highlighting the role of social wasps in transporting brewer's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) from place to place:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/07/30/you-can-thank-wasps-for-your-bread-beer-and-wine/

Exerpts:

"The wild strains do grow on grapes and berries, but only found on ripe fruits rather than pristine ones. And they’re usually only found in warm summery conditions. So, where do they go in the intervening months, and how do they move around? They certainly can’t go airborne, so something must be carrying them."

"Sampaio thinks that the bark of oak trees is the true natural habitat for S.cerevisiae. He has isolated the fungus from oaks all year round and in three quarters of his samples...'For our conceptual framework, wasps are not needed as habitats although, they’re very interesting as vectors,” he says. After all, they may live in trees, but they still need a lift.'"

Here's another article about the discovery that an ancestor of lager yeast is living in infected beech trees: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/08/lager-beers-mystery-yeast.html

"He and his colleagues were compiling a genetic directory of different Saccharomyces species, which in nature live in oak trees"

I think there are two main points I'd like to make:
1) It doesn't make much sense to expect to catch an individual microbe species from the air. Think about it -- there are millions of microbe species, perhaps billions. Living microbes can't even travel in the air -- they will dry out and die, so they have to make spores that can make the journey. You're counting on a spore of S. cerevisiae taking off from a fluxing oak tree or rotting fruit, then randomly traveling to your wort on the breeze. The authors of the first study didn't even believe that brewer's yeast could travel in the air by itself. (I am skeptical. There have to be at least some S. cerevisiae spores in the air. But apparently there are not many.)

2) It also doesn't make munch sense to believe that only certain types of microbes would be transported by insects. Wouldn't you expect an insect to be covered in the microbes from whatever environment it just came from? If an insect were in a vinegar environment, then sure it would be covered in acetobacter (or any other of the many acetic acid producers). But if the bug just visited an oak tree with an infected flux, then it would be covered in some mixture of yeasts (some of which will likely be Saccharomyces).

So, given what scientists know about the natural habitat and transportation of brewer's yeast, how should we go about catching it? I think a good place to start would be to wait for the early spring when oak trees begin to flow their sap. Either find an infected oak flux and collect Saccharomyes directly from the infected sap, or allow sugar-seeking insects like social wasps to bring the yeast from the oak to our wort (just leave wort out at the right time of year without cheesecloth).

A good second option would be to wait until mid-summer to early Fall when fruit lies rotting on the ground, and either collect directly from rotting fruit, or just let insects bring the yeast to our wort. Don't bother collecting in the winter or from fresh fruit -- the white stuff on the outside of grapes and plums is not yeast.

I know contributors to this forum have been cultivating yeast from flasks of wort placed in dusty basements and screened windowsills, but we typically don't do unopened controls to make sure we're not accidentally growing something that was already present in the wort we made (something like WLP001).

It just makes sense that we're most likely to catch wild or feral S. cerevisiae from a completely open jar placed outside in the warm months.

This starter was pitched into a test batch of beer about three weeks ago, and the fermentation is taking on a very interesting path (one more like a lambic or other sour beer than some of the "cleaner" Belgian-esque) examples on this thread). The beginnings of a powdery / filmy white pellicle are evident.

My question: How long have others left their beer on the wild yeast cake? I am inclined to let this one ride it out in the primary as I would with a lambic since I am sure there are a host of organisms (maybe even Brettanomyces) that will eat up any of the nasties produced by autolysis.

Thoughts? Your experiences?
Thanks.

@Merkinman: I would say it's almost certain that you have some slow, patient aerobic guys in there, especially since you have a pellicle. Maybe Brett, but also maybe some other oxidative yeast that may contribute flavours that you may or may not like. It's a risk, but you may get lucky. Not sure if you have a funky-beer set-up, but if I were you I would pour that beer into a glass carboy with a bung and an oak (?) rod in the hole to let a small amount of oxygen in over a long period, and then put it into storage and taste it every 4 months or so. My 2c, anyway.

Also, all this talk about insects etc. does not matter. The simple fact is that what people are doing is working. There MUST be yeast in the air if cheesecloth still allows yeast in, or the alternative is that the bugs are walking on top of the cheesecloth all puzzled and pacing back and forth about how to get to the yummy wort, and are shaking their tailfeathers enough so that yeast get sprinkled down through the holes in the cloth. It's all moot though; what we do works, and we don't have to scoop mold-forming insect corpses out of our precious efforts and hopes.

EDIT: and when I say "working", I mean fermentation is happening whether or not it gives a nice product.

Pith said:

Also, all this talk about insects etc. does not matter. The simple fact is that what people are doing is working. There MUST be yeast in the air if cheesecloth still allows yeast in, or the alternative is that the bugs are walking on top of the cheesecloth all puzzled and pacing back and forth about how to get to the yummy wort, and are shaking their tailfeathers enough so that yeast get sprinkled down through the holes in the cloth. It's all moot though; what we do works, and we don't have to scoop mold-forming insect corpses out of our precious efforts and hopes.

Click to expand...

The alternative is that domesticated yeast spores survive in the wort and go on to populate the broth. None of us uses sterilized wort: we all use sanitized wort, which is far from yeast-free. When yeast grows in our wild cultures, it's entirely possible that we've 'caught' some Wyeast.

The reason thinking about insects matters is because, in the absence of a sterile laboratory at your disposal, you want to bias yourself away from 'catching' Wyeast, and toward actually catching a wild yeast. It seems that yeast biologists don't believe that yeast easily transports from place to place on the air. Have we really been rigorous enough with sterilized broth and sterile technique to disprove them? Hardly.

I guess there seem to be two opinions on this board: Some of us are content to open up a sanitized flask and brew with whatever grows in it. We've all done this, right? You can make good beer that way, and it's fun!

But some of us (myself included) also want to think about what it would mean to catch a truly wild yeast -- to work toward becoming more sure that we're not accidentally catching some mixture of WLP, Wyeast, and Fleischmann's. It's not an easy task, because our world is literally covered with domesticated yeast. We are the vectors for domesticated yeast, like social wasps are for wild Saccharomyces. So it requires extra effort on our part to be sure we're growing something truly wild.

Sorry if I'm raining on the parade of those of the first opinion. Science ruins everything.

Well. If I have grown a culture from a few spores of brewer's yeast that can survive having boiled water poured on top of it and then boiled in the dishwasher for an hour, then frankly I'd be happy to proclaim to have captured such an extraordinarily resilient yeast. Such as it is, I have grown some "truly wild" yeast, then isolated several of the species on an agar slant, then discovered they autolysed into a Vegemite taste/smell (I like vegemite on bread but not in my beer) very soon after fermentation is complete. The procedure and results prove to me that a) the yeast I isolated was utterly useless for brewing unlike brewer's yeast, and b) that it was probably not brewers yeast.

If we were catching domesticated yeasts, everyone would have fairly familiar tasting and fairly successful projects all the way through, since they usually only brew with yeast they enjoy the taste profiles of. Such as it is, I've had my fair share of band-aid, tomato-paste, and broccoli taste profiles that I have discarded fairly quickly. I have no doubt that those yeasts are not recaptured commercial yeasts.

If brewers are having success with securely cheesecloth covered things, it means that yeast is getting in through some other means than by an insect touching it. It's either shaken off the insect as it hung around (which suggests that there are at least SOME yeast being shaken off insects as they fly around anywhere), or floated in on the air. People in this thread are finding pellicles where they have never brewed with Brett before, which means it's not coming from their own set-ups.

Sure, I'm not suggesting that it's impossible to recapture wyeast through improper sanitation, but with proper sanitation, it's very unlikely. And if it does happen even with proper sanitation, it may prove that yeast CAN travel on air, which suggests that wild Sacchs may be able to do the same thing. Nor am I suggesting insects do not carry yeast. I would be surprised if they didn't. Just saying you obviously don't need insect CONTACT to inoculate wort with wild yeast.

Having said all that, I still don't know the likelihood of actually capturing a wild Saccharomyces Cereviseae from the environment. Suffice to say that the entire wild culture may prove useful for creating plambics but that individual strains as I have tried to isolate may or may not be a worthwhile goal.

Hey Folks, I've been sampling overly ripe orchard fruit for sacch and Bret. Plucked from tree with gloves, stored isolated and processed separately in a sanitized lab space, sanitized again between samples . Method with photos and microscope images are all found here! clemsonbiofuels.wordpress.com I'm a believer that every region should develop their own varieties to encourage diversity from regionally specific brewing.

Cheers all around and keep up all of this great experimentation!

biodavid said:

Hey Folks, I've been sampling overly ripe orchard fruit for sacch and Bret. Plucked from tree with gloves, stored isolated and processed separately in a sanitized lab space, sanitized again between samples . Method with photos and microscope images are all found here! clemsonbiofuels.wordpress.com I'm a believer that every region should develop their own varieties to encourage diversity from regionally specific brewing.

Cheers all around and keep up all of this great experimentation!

Click to expand...

Thanks, biodavid. It's uplifting to see that wild yeast are able to be captured despite all the skepticism above. I tried this sort of thing myself, but made the mistake of trying to isolate a strain by slanting it on a plate. Nothing good came from it. Maybe next spring (coming up next in the Southern Hemisphere) I will capture some yeast and simply let the entire culture ferment a beer over a long period of time to try and get some Brett funk after a year or two.

Pith said:

Thanks, biodavid. It's uplifting to see that wild yeast are able to be captured despite all the skepticism above.

Click to expand...

Yes, but Pith, biodavid is using precisely the sterile laboratory techniques that are required to claim that you've captured a wild yeast. I'm skeptical that we can capture wild yeast without sterile technique.

This is definitely achievable at home. Sufficient sanitization of equipment with 70% ethanol is easily achieved. My only concern for home propogation is exposure to airborn yeast in your brew lab. Just transfer quickly. For home use, I wouldn't stress the air exposure issue. Definitely don't bother plating individual colony forming units. The beauty of Saison is the cocktail that makes the yeast culture. A single strain will likely make a boring beer. I will be streaking individual colony forming units, but only for the purpose of species identification.

Easiest way to catch a wild yeast is by making a sour mash from grapes. I do this every summer and mash unwashed grapes using a stainless sterilized tamper in a sanitized Gatorade cooler. After three or four days you can use the grape must to make a yeast starter. Then make a 12 brix solution of wort to feed your starter. This offers a low sugar content to get the culture to multiply quickly. Let ferment 1 week, then pitch the liquid starter ( no trub)in a 20 brix solution. The high alcohol content and low ph will clean up your culture. You can then save or pitch this upper liquid phase in you radical brew. Great for muscadine wine, Meade and melomel.

When I make melomels I sour mash like this procedure starts, then add some yeast nutrient and pitch champagne yeast after 3-4 days. Spices up the brew significantly.

How about this senario; Can some fresh starter wort, let cool while still sealed, truck it to the juniper forest (miles away from your brew lab), sanitize the jar again and open the canned wort, aerate, pour wort into your sterilized starter flask and drop a juniper berry in, seal the starter with freshly sanitized bung and an airlock with vodka in it.

I guess the argument would be that some commercial yeast could have made it's way to the juniper forest and could be airbourne or could have stuck to the juniper berry? I would say that you are NEVER going to be able to ensure that you aren't getting a previously commercialized yeast. I would also state that there are so many different strains of commercial yeast that it would be cost prohibitive to test, who's to say that one of the commercial yeasts did not come from a juniper berry, one probably has.

My point is: Why worry about it, if it works it works.

Id say that yeast would be pretty wild. I'd take at least three samples though. I found different cultures from the same tree had different profiles.

The September issue of BYO has the article I wrote on American Wild Ales, including some good tips on how Allagash. Russian River, and Jolly Pumpin do their spontaneous fermentations.

I just brewed a lambic over the weekend, I let it cool naturally uncovered in the brew pot, but pitched a starter made from 3 Fonteinen dregs when I moved it to a Better Bottle after 18 hours. After 36 hours there still isn't any visible fermentation, which is a bit disconcerting.

Oldsock did it ever start fermenting?

Just discovered this thread. Here's my first experiment:

Back in ~ February 2012 I made a batch of Imperial Stout. 5 gallons went into the bucket, but I'd made a bit extra so I siphoned out about 2/3rds a gallon while still pretty hot into a sanitized gallon jug (green glass, probably an old jug-wine jug) with a bit of cold water so the glass didn't break and sealed the jar up immediately. I put that in a cold bath while finishing up the rest of the batch and cleaning up the mess afterwards. Once I was done and convinced the jug was cooled down sufficiently (~1 am) I took the jug for a little ride to the top of Twin Peaks in San Francisco. I figured I'd have plenty of wind over some bit of nature on the upslope and only about 3 miles of city between me and the Pacific. I didn't worry about trying to re-sanitize, etc. Opened it up, heard the vacuum break with a woosh, and then as I had no idea if this was going to be enough, I put the jug in the wind (and away from the tourists) and sat in the car and read a magazine for about an hour. Sealed it up, took it home, topped it off with some more water to a gallon, and popped in the airlock. I never intentionally added any 'real' yeast or other microbes and did at least basic things to protect it from lingering yeast left over from use of the same tools. It did nothing for at least a week. Then about 10 days in--woosh. It fermented out fast and deep, ended up with something like a 1.002 reading. It tasted different than the regular batch for sure, but didn't taste wrong or off. I eventually got ~9 bottles out of it, brought some to the latest SF Homebrewer's Guild brew-share (along with another batch of that same Imperial Stout recipe) to share and I heard no complaints. The wild one is dryer tasting (as one would expect at 1.002 FG) Had someone that was there tell me last night they preferred the wild one.

I'm sure there's plenty of yeast around my apartment and brewing equipment that could have potentially gotten into it, but considering how different it tastes and how quickly and thorougly it fermented out once it caught, I assume it's gotten at least something else in it. I dunno if the native sourdough yeasts would act this way, either. Maybe Beach Chalet or Social Kitchen & Brewery sent something into the air upwind from my location.

I'm considering trying to harvest some yeast from a bottle and doing something larger with it.


I got the idea from reading about some brewer north of San Francisco putting beer hot/warm into 55 gallon drums and sealing them, driving them out to the redwoods after cooling, then opening up the airvent which sucks in a bunch of air, closing them up, driving them back home and afixing an airlock. That's how I remember the story anyway, don't remember the brewery nor whether Celebrator, BeerAdvocate, or one of the regional Brewing News.

i am on my second attempt at a wild ferment 'starter', largely modeled on the description from oldsock's (excellent) blog. the first one i did, i made a 1.030ish wort from extract that was supposed to be hopped to 5 ibu or so just with normal (not old) pellets, but i realized afterwards that my scale was doing odd things, so i think it was higher. i cooled it and left it by the open window for a few hours on a warm night, then into an airlocked jug. it looked like it was starting to foam up after about 3 days but then it looked dead, and started to get black mold. i chucked it after 10 days. second one is 2L of 1.030 wort, very lightly hopped this time (for sure), boiled up and then put the still hot pot, covered with cheesecloth, outside on the rooftop patio on a cool evening, all night. in the morning poured to an airlocked jug, the only additional aeration was pouring through the funnel. 7 days later there is no visible anything going on in there. i was expecting some obvious signs of life at this point?? not sure what my question is

ericd I have a noob question about this and I apologize if this has already been asnswered but ith either your LG wort and open innoculation method or the agar slant method how does anyone know it's an actuall yeast fermentation and not bacterial ? Thanks.

So I gave this a shot I put a mason jar outside on Sunday for 4 hours. It had 1.030 wort I placed foil over the top after being outside. Just gave it a look and smell has sediment on the bottom and smells like stinky feet lol. Im guessing its got something going only time will tell.

yep i left my 2L to go to town, under airlock, a week and a half so far. it is cloudy so it has stuff growing in it, nothing particularly nasty looking, but nothing obviously aerobic, i popped it open for a good (or otherwise) nostril-full and it's like a medium-stinky camembert, savory footy almost cooked corn smell. i have No Idea if this is good, bad, irrelevant, paradigm-shattering, .......

ok I'm gonna go for this today...... I'm going to leave the starter out for a bit in a mason jar. After i bring it in should I put it into a flask or bottle or something with a air lock ? or just leave it in the mason jar until I see bubbles uncovered then pitch it into the wort ? wouldn't it get oxidized or aceobater in it and oxygen to feed it if I left it open to oxygen for too long ?

Also, is there anything wrong with doing a mixture of dme and honey ? I kinda did a mixture as my dme mixture was way to low and I had no more dme so I added honey is that ok ?

Aschecte said:

ok I'm gonna go for this today...... I'm going to leave the starter out for a bit in a mason jar. After i bring it in should I put it into a flask or bottle or something with a air lock ? or just leave it in the mason jar until I see bubbles uncovered then pitch it into the wort ? wouldn't it get oxidized or aceobater in it and oxygen to feed it if I left it open to oxygen for too long ?

Also, is there anything wrong with doing a mixture of dme and honey ? I kinda did a mixture as my dme mixture was way to low and I had no more dme so I added honey is that ok ?

Click to expand...

Unless you boiled the honey long enough to kill anything it in, you could end up growing whatever was in/on the honey rather than whatever was in the air.

I'd put a loose fitting lid on the mason jar and put it on the kitchen counter so I could watch it, give it a shake, etc. (In fact that's what I'm doing with the sediment from my only-wild fermented Imp.Stout. right now.) You can also just get it under airlock and leave it alone, too. Try both.

roymeo said:

Unless you boiled the honey long enough to kill anything it in, you could end up growing whatever was in/on the honey rather than whatever was in the air.

I'd put a loose fitting lid on the mason jar and put it on the kitchen counter so I could watch it, give it a shake, etc. (In fact that's what I'm doing with the sediment from my only-wild fermented Imp.Stout. right now.) You can also just get it under airlock and leave it alone, too. Try both.

Click to expand...

Yeah that's the problem I started out with just dme and cooled it down than because my OG was only like 1.010 I added honey to it to raise it up to 1.025. Crap maybe I should just boil it again and put it back outside ?

I'm going to play this game too. Who knows if this is going to work or not since I'm not taking advantage of a lot of the great advice in the thread.

It's supposed to freeze tonight so I figured the rest of my raspberries were goners for sure. I snipped off the four or five that were closest to ripe and then tossed them into some canned wort I had lying around. Stirplate on and.... we'll see what happens in a week or two.

manoaction said:

I'm going to play this game too. Who knows if this is going to work or not since I'm not taking advantage of a lot of the great advice in the thread.

It's supposed to freeze tonight so I figured the rest of my raspberries were goners for sure. I snipped off the four or five that were closest to ripe and then tossed them into some canned wort I had lying around. Stirplate on and.... we'll see what happens in a week or two.

Click to expand...

Can't wait hear what happens

as an update, i've made three beers with my wild yeast - the last one was a sour saison - broke it out for my poker buddies last month who drink beer and all said "fantastic beer, what's in it? (they know better)" and another said "best beer you've made" - i did a control with a saison yeast against the same recipe - all liked the wild more than the control... i have my wild stored and it is fantastic. i'm going to brew a pale ale with it next to see how it does. it attenuates very dry (92% on my saison, mashed low so keep that in mind), has brett in it for sure (nothing crazy though - likely c or b) but i'm excited about the long term prospects of this yeast.

next step, steal a culture from a bottle and step it up to see how that performs...

best thread on the internet right here imo...

as an update, i've made three beers with my wild yeast - the last one was a sour saison - broke it out for my poker buddies last month who drink beer and all said "fantastic beer, what's in it? (they know better)" and another said "best beer you've made" - i did a control with a saison yeast against the same recipe - all liked the wild more than the control... i have my wild stored and it is fantastic. i'm going to brew a pale ale with it next to see how it does. it attenuates very dry (92% on my saison, mashed low so keep that in mind), has brett in it for sure (nothing crazy though - likely c or b) but i'm excited about the long term prospects of this yeast.

Click to expand...

Your stories are giving me new home about this business.....

After three days with the unripened raspberries in my wort on a stirplate, I had absolutely nothing happening. A prudent soul would wait until at least a week, but I'm a wildly impatient soul.

I tossed four juniper berries from my Rocky Mountain Juniper tree in the back yard into the flask. These berries were covered with the white film that I'm assuming is yeast. I also tossed in a dash of acid blend and yeast energizer. That's right folks, I said a dash. We're way scientific here at ManOAction Brewing....

No joke I have a pellicle 3 days in !!! I didn't even know that was possible but its got the atypical Brett bubbles and skin.

manoaction said:

These berries were covered with the white film that I'm assuming is yeast.

Click to expand...

generally a wax "bloom" like on a ripe plum

Well, after only 24 hours, the stir plate wort has turned cloudy and there is a ring of bubbles around the outside that look like carbonation is being knocked out of it. It smells piny/citrus sweet and definitely different than before, but that might be the acid blend adding in or maybe just juice from the juniper berries dissolving into the mixture.

At any rate, I'm taking it all as a positive sign.

I rubberbanded coffee filters over the tops of my various yeast traps. Will a coffee filter let enough air through, or should I switch to loosely fitted aluminum foil lids? I see sediment in them, but I'm not sure whether that's yeast or some dme falling out of suspension...but the dme was thoroughly boiled and dissolved. So I'm hopeful it's yeast!

I may have made my wort too hoppy, though, because it's hard to smell anything else. I wanted to make sure I only captured sacch yeast. Will the yeast aroma come out when I decant and wash the slurry, or will some hops stick to the yeast slurry?