I am a beginner when it comes to wild brewing. Please bear with me on this, I will trying to keep my wording as technically accurate as possible. I would love any comments or concerns you have regarding this process.
So a few weeks ago I decided to see if I could get a yeast/bacteria culture started from my cats (Aerolite and Luna). I was inspired by a few beer blog articles about spontaneous fermentation and wanted to give it a try. Here's my progress so far:
http://i.imgur.com/USH65D2.jpg (First Picture)
I started by preparing two separate 2L batches of wort. I cleaned and sanitized everything as a normally would when brewing.
1. 200g of Pilsner DME with 2L of Drinking Water
2. Boiled for 5 minutes with some Saaz Hops (6 pellets or so each) and a knife edge of yeast nutrient
3. Chilled to about 70 degF
4. Shake Aerated for 5-10 minutes each
5. Pet the back of my cats and balled up the fur.
6. Pitched the cat fur into the jugs and labeled each one after the cat
I waited... and waited... and didn't see much activity at first. A small amount of mold grew on the ball of fur in the "Aerolite" jug on the ball of fur. At this point I was fairly discouraged and didn't think that I was going to get much out of it. It was around day 6 that I posted this album.
http://imgur.com/a/6jiir
Note: The dark masses are the balls of fur. You can't see the small amount of mold that grew on the hairball in the Aerolite jug.
The day after I posted that album the jugs really took off. I saw an amazing Krausen and they churned away for a few days. I went on a week-long work trip and when I came back they were completely done fermenting. I went ahead and tossed the jugs into my keezer to get the bacteria and fungus to settle out.
After crash cooling for a couple days, I set about collecting the sediment for re-pitching. I decanted off the beer and collected the sediment into some sanitized jars. Here are some photos I took during this process:
http://imgur.com/a/WAhlN
I was lucky and the small mold spot stuck to the Aerolite fur ball. This made it easy to avoid collecting the mold in the jar. Both beers and jars... smelled very bready. Maybe a bit funky. My fiance smelled both beers and said they smelled very similar to my normal beer batches (not sure if that's a good sign or not...) I was really happy that I might be getting something cool out of this experiment and wanted to get the next step going.
That evening, I made 2x 1-gallon batches of Pislner DME and Saaz hops wort. I took the 2 Luna jars and 1 Aerolite jar and pitched them into the wort as I would typically do with brewing yeast. All sanitation procedures were done as usual.
Today is day 1 of the second propagation and the jugs are going nuts! Very aggressive fermentation and a nice, fairly normal looking krausen.
I'll take some pictures of the jugs when I get home from work and post them in this thread.
My plans are to do this one or two more times and then hopefully try it in a batch intended for consumption.
My questions for you are:
So a few weeks ago I decided to see if I could get a yeast/bacteria culture started from my cats (Aerolite and Luna). I was inspired by a few beer blog articles about spontaneous fermentation and wanted to give it a try. Here's my progress so far:
http://i.imgur.com/USH65D2.jpg (First Picture)
I started by preparing two separate 2L batches of wort. I cleaned and sanitized everything as a normally would when brewing.
1. 200g of Pilsner DME with 2L of Drinking Water
2. Boiled for 5 minutes with some Saaz Hops (6 pellets or so each) and a knife edge of yeast nutrient
3. Chilled to about 70 degF
4. Shake Aerated for 5-10 minutes each
5. Pet the back of my cats and balled up the fur.
6. Pitched the cat fur into the jugs and labeled each one after the cat
I waited... and waited... and didn't see much activity at first. A small amount of mold grew on the ball of fur in the "Aerolite" jug on the ball of fur. At this point I was fairly discouraged and didn't think that I was going to get much out of it. It was around day 6 that I posted this album.
http://imgur.com/a/6jiir
Note: The dark masses are the balls of fur. You can't see the small amount of mold that grew on the hairball in the Aerolite jug.
The day after I posted that album the jugs really took off. I saw an amazing Krausen and they churned away for a few days. I went on a week-long work trip and when I came back they were completely done fermenting. I went ahead and tossed the jugs into my keezer to get the bacteria and fungus to settle out.
After crash cooling for a couple days, I set about collecting the sediment for re-pitching. I decanted off the beer and collected the sediment into some sanitized jars. Here are some photos I took during this process:
http://imgur.com/a/WAhlN
I was lucky and the small mold spot stuck to the Aerolite fur ball. This made it easy to avoid collecting the mold in the jar. Both beers and jars... smelled very bready. Maybe a bit funky. My fiance smelled both beers and said they smelled very similar to my normal beer batches (not sure if that's a good sign or not...) I was really happy that I might be getting something cool out of this experiment and wanted to get the next step going.
That evening, I made 2x 1-gallon batches of Pislner DME and Saaz hops wort. I took the 2 Luna jars and 1 Aerolite jar and pitched them into the wort as I would typically do with brewing yeast. All sanitation procedures were done as usual.
Today is day 1 of the second propagation and the jugs are going nuts! Very aggressive fermentation and a nice, fairly normal looking krausen.
I'll take some pictures of the jugs when I get home from work and post them in this thread.
My plans are to do this one or two more times and then hopefully try it in a batch intended for consumption.
My questions for you are:
- What are some style options that would be suited for a beer with this sour/wild culture?
- Is there a place I could send this to get tested for potability?
- Should I worry about tasting it after a couple rounds of propagation?
