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Hoppy2bmerry said:
@sweetcell, thanks the oak idea truly is my clutching at straws to turn this around, I could even Improve it by dry hopping with something tropical perhaps, and skip the wood.
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i like the dry-hopping idea. should make the beer more interesting, with minimal effort...

Hoppy2bmerry said:
I've used fruit additions in mead, cider and stout, but luckily haven't run into trouble like this previously. The frozen fruits I've used before I don't recall how I handled sanitizing. Mulberries I had picked for mead I rinsed in campden.
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the higher levels of alcohol in mead, and possibly in the stout, might have provided protection against infections. i've never sanitized fruit additions for mead, and i've never had a problem.
 
IMG_1099.jpg
Kettle soured Gose
 
I placed a couple of small mason jars of 1.035 wort, hopped with some leftover equinox hops to inhibit the lacto, out in an orchard under some peach and apple trees in March of last year. The jars had cheesecloth with a rubber band over them to keep the insects out. Left them out for 48 hours, brought them in and airlocked them. Fermentation was slow and krausen developed after about a week and half. I fed these cultures 4 more times over the next couple months to build up what was there. Then I started plating them out on agar plates and just kept streaking out to narrow down single cultures and then growing those up to see what I had and what was usable.
 
twistedjosh said:
I placed a couple of small mason jars of 1.035 wort, hopped with some leftover equinox hops to inhibit the lacto, out in an orchard under some peach and apple trees in March of last year. The jars had cheesecloth with a rubber band over them to keep the insects out. Left them out for 48 hours, brought them in and airlocked them. Fermentation was slow and krausen developed after about a week and half. I fed these cultures 4 more times over the next couple months to build up what was there. Then I started plating them out on agar plates and just kept streaking out to narrow down single cultures and then growing those up to see what I had and what was usable.
Click to expand...

That’s dedication, nice work white labs/wyeast might be calling you soon [emoji482]
 
twistedjosh said:
View attachment 557569
2 strains of wild Brettanomyces isolated from an orchard 5 hours after pitching
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twistedjosh said:
I placed a couple of small mason jars of 1.035 wort, hopped with some leftover equinox hops to inhibit the lacto, out in an orchard under some peach and apple trees in March of last year. The jars had cheesecloth with a rubber band over them to keep the insects out. Left them out for 48 hours, brought them in and airlocked them. Fermentation was slow and krausen developed after about a week and half. I fed these cultures 4 more times over the next couple months to build up what was there. Then I started plating them out on agar plates and just kept streaking out to narrow down single cultures and then growing those up to see what I had and what was usable.
Click to expand...
nice!

how do you know that they are brett and not sacch, or some other genus?
 
twistedjosh said:
I placed a couple of small mason jars of 1.035 wort, hopped with some leftover equinox hops to inhibit the lacto, out in an orchard under some peach and apple trees in March of last year. The jars had cheesecloth with a rubber band over them to keep the insects out. Left them out for 48 hours, brought them in and airlocked them. Fermentation was slow and krausen developed after about a week and half. I fed these cultures 4 more times over the next couple months to build up what was there. Then I started plating them out on agar plates and just kept streaking out to narrow down single cultures and then growing those up to see what I had and what was usable.
Click to expand...

Great job, did you get a lot of unusable colonies (bacteria or sacch.?) on plates or was it mainly Brett?
 
Using a microscope, streaking them out then growing them up. It was mostly Brett. Of the two strains I got, one has a strong apple cider thing going on, the other is a very fruity, pineapple-ish aroma and taste with some subtle stone fruit undertones. I did get a very clean sacch strain that does real well at lager temps, and an ale strain that every time I grew up tasted very “Belgiany” but it had a weird burnt plastic thing going on in the nose so I ended up dumping it. I got a culture of lacto from a later attempt in the fall with unhopped wort that I have not had a chance to try out yet. It’s been a long process, but I am really pleased with the results I’ve had. This was one of the stills from the mother culture
IMG_1352.jpg
 
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twistedjosh said:
Using a microscope, streaking them out then growing them up. It was mostly Brett. Of the two strains I got, one has a strong apple cider thing going on, the other is a very fruity, pineapple-ish aroma and taste with some subtle stone fruit undertones. I did get a very clean sacch strain that does real well at lager temps, and an ale strain that every time I grew up tasted very “Belgiany” but it had a weird burnt plastic thing going on in the nose so I ended up dumping it. I got a culture of lacto from a later attempt in the fall with unhopped wort that I have not had a chance to try out yet. It’s been a long process, but I am really pleased with the results I’ve had. This was one of the stills from the mother cultureView attachment 558224
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Man, that's awesome! Do you have some sort of background in this or are you tinkering and learning it all as you go?
 
Just learning as I go. The internet community is such an awesome resource, and brewers both home and commercial are such an influence, always willing to share their experiences and lessons learned along the way.
 
Yum?

(Consecration clone that I haven't looked at for months....finally starting to taste sour. Need to oak it soon, and think about bottling)

20180303_225723.jpg
 
20180503_205314[1].jpg
As soon as I got this, I racked into a clean carboy, and added 1/4 tsp of Potassium Metabisulfite. Hopefully that will kill it off.
 
Huge bubble on a 9 month old Kriek. Haven't opened the stopper on the better bottle since I racked from primary onto 16 Oz. Tart cherry concentrate. Primary and only yeast was Yeast Bay Mélange. FG was at 1.000. Smelled awesome while bottling with plenty of funky Brett. Primed with more tart cherry juice.

IMG_0166.jpg
 
sweetcell said:
dude. 4 days? that's insane. be careful that culture doesn't ferment the glass jar, and then makes a break for it...
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Yes, the beer I harvested from is nuts. A big mixed pitch of Thames Valley, Suburban Brett, and Sour Batch Kids. After 3 weeks it’s already bracingly sour and pretty tasty. I just sent it to a barrel for several months and told it to think about what it’s done.
 
I've had strawberries floating in a kettle soured wheat beer for about 2 weeks, and just noticed that some of the strawberries floating on top have this white powdery looking stuff on them. I don't see any fuzz, but I'm guessing it's mold? Does anyone have any other idea what it could be?

vk1fvHp.jpg
 
ddeantodd said:
I've had strawberries floating in a kettle soured wheat beer for about 2 weeks, and just noticed that some of the strawberries floating on top have this white powdery looking stuff on them. I don't see any fuzz, but I'm guessing it's mold? Does anyone have any other idea what it could be?

vk1fvHp.jpg
Click to expand...

Doesn’t look too promising. That’s a long time to steep fruit in a beer, especially floating (exposure to air really increases the tendency to mold). Is there any krausen/yeast rafts on the surface that look like that? Anyway, I would rack and package now, assuming it tastes fine.
 
ong said:
Doesn’t look too promising. That’s a long time to steep fruit in a beer, especially floating (exposure to air really increases the tendency to mold). Is there any krausen/yeast rafts on the surface that look like that? Anyway, I would rack and package now, assuming it tastes fine.
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Yeah, I should punched it down or swirled it to keep the fruit wet and off the surface. Lesson learned. I did taste it a little, and it tasted great. But I've read on a few posts and the MTF wiki that tasting isn't necessarily a fool-proof way to ensure nothing nasty or dangerous has gotten into the beer. I'll be safe and dump it, and go at it again. Thanks!
 
That doesn't look like mold to me. Rather it looks strikingly similar to the pellicle forming on my Flanders.

Scroll up through the thread, lots of white powdery pellicles!
 
ddeantodd said:
Yeah, I should punched it down or swirled it to keep the fruit wet and off the surface. Lesson learned. I did taste it a little, and it tasted great. But I've read on a few posts and the MTF wiki that tasting isn't necessarily a fool-proof way to ensure nothing nasty or dangerous has gotten into the beer. I'll be safe and dump it, and go at it again. Thanks!
Click to expand...

I wouldn’t dump it if it tastes good. Maybe just drink it quickly. People are pretty sensitive to mold flavors. (Unless of course you have mold allergies or a compromised immune system or something.)
 
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So I make this fermented red jalapeno hot sauce and this time around I decided to add some of my lacto culture to it just for the hell of it. 48 hours later, I have this. Lol.
20180619_203747.jpeg
 

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