Collecting Culture from My Cats

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The best part of this thread now is that I am getting cat food ads at the bottom of the page now ...

I really think this is cool, and hope it turns out well for you
 
Inkleg said:
So with my hairless cat, should I just dunk the whole cat and leave it in until I see signs of fermentation?
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Cmon man. I don't mean to be a dick, but you really should know only felines of the haired variety will work for this.

Tabbys yea

Lions sure

Dr Evils cat, no
 
ba-brewer said:
Glad to see all of the jokes have not deterred your project. Cant really comment on how many times to propagate the culture, but I would say enough times so that you would be willing to take the first drink.

If you dont think you could drink it then maybe leave out some wort in your house to see if you can get a spontaneous ferment without direct cat involvement. I would guess the results would be similar. It might makes sense to do it anyway as a control to see if the cats do add anything that dont already exist in house.

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2011/04/ambient-spontaneous-yeast-starters.html

If you are looking to promote the yeast and not the bacteria from your cats spit it seems like keeping your starter cooler might do that. Maybe more frequent feeding would promote the yeast too, I know that works for sour dough bread to make it less sour.
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Fantastic advice! Thank you very much for commenting. I will definitely do at least one more propagation before I attempt to make a drinkable beer. I will throw them in my fermentation chamber (happen to have a non-cat wheat about to finish anyhow). Any idea what sort of temperature would be a nice and cool? 60 degF, perhaps?

All these cat puns are amazing. So many great cat puns and cat beer names. I couldn't be happier.
 
Just be sure to hide that beer from the cat.

cats_beer_05.jpg
 
Aerolite said:
Fantastic advice! Thank you very much for commenting. I will definitely do at least one more propagation before I attempt to make a drinkable beer. I will throw them in my fermentation chamber (happen to have a non-cat wheat about to finish anyhow). Any idea what sort of temperature would be a nice and cool? 60 degF, perhaps?

All these cat puns are amazing. So many great cat puns and cat beer names. I couldn't be happier.
Click to expand...

60F would be my guess too. I think you might need to divide and build the culture back up a couple time in the same environment to get a particular ratio of yeast to bacteria. I think if you want more yeast than bacteria you would want to divide it while the yeast is at it's peak activity or shortly after.

I am curious about your motivation to start with your cats hair for the culture, did you just want to see if it could be done or is there some character you hope to get from the result?
 
Bump to keep the thread from the catacombs of the forum.


bad-beer-cat.jpg
 
I just smelled it. Smells very normal. I give it about a 10-20% chance I'll risk a taste this go round. Waiting now for the bacteria and yeast to drop out of solution. Will post a before and after crash cool photo when i get home from work!

Thanks for being interested :)

Can't wait to profile a real beer with this culture. Still not 100% on the style. Will probably go all DME for the first round. 150g per litre or so. Would 100g Pilsner and 50g dark DME produce and interesting balance? I have some leftover hops I can use too. I'll check to see what options I have when I get home.
 
Aerolite said:
Can't wait to profile a real beer with this culture. Still not 100% on the style. Will probably go all DME for the first round. 150g per litre or so. Would 100g Pilsner and 50g dark DME produce and interesting balance?
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i would keep it as simple as possible for the first round, since the point of it should be to discover what your culture does. you don't want flavors from malts, hops, etc to get in the way.

you might also want to try keeping the IBUs low for this first round, then try again with higher IBUs, in case and of the bacteria are hop-sensitive.
 
Psylocide said:
Mine is 99% guaranteed to contain dog hair.

**** ends up everywhere else, and have fished a floating hair out of my sparge bucket before.
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I remember reading a long time ago that house dust is 80% human dander. Just think what that is with kids and pets thrown in the mix.

That's why I brew in the garage by the open door. I can limit it to dust, pollen, birds, squirrels, mice, spiders, roaches, worms, and random human. :D
 
Oh no 3 days with nothing i almost went into catalepsy

il_570xN.582712723_tkhi.jpg
 
Hey guys! Sorry it took me so long to post another reply. Ended up having life get in the way of my brewing ;)

http://imgur.com/a/4RqK7

Put together this album to show the first tasting of my cat beer! One of them ended up coming out very nicely and I plan to use it in a few one gallon batches. The other one tasted slightly off, but still much better than I expected.

Horde Mug = Aerolite
-Tasted Great! Very bready, funky, and a bit tangy. My best guess is a mix of classic yeast, brett, and lacto. Certainly not 100% sure of this, but that's my gut feeling. Didn't notice very much fruit or spice coming from the culture. Honestly... tasted and smelled like Aerolite himself. I will certainly make a few gallon batches with this culture!

Alliance Mug = Luna
-Hmmm... Tasted like beer. Definitely not terrible. Had this sort of gut-turning taste that I just can't place. My fiance liked this better, but she's biased on the cat that it came from. Not sure I'll use this one in a beer. I'll hold onto it just in case.

Let me know if you have any questions! I'll be sure to post photos from the first real temperature controlled batch that I make with the Aerolite culture.
 
Quick question...I understand the need to try and find wild or rare yeast, but why, why, Why, WHY, WHYYYYYYYYYY would you throw cat fur, whole, into wort and try and taste it? Why not just take a swab from your cats and see if it cultures onto a simple petri dish of agar and starter wort jelly mixture? That way you can at least isolate healthy looking colonies and avoid the ones that are obviously mold or just downright nasty.
 
:off: OP, please look at the following two articles for some advice.

Collecting Wild Yeast

Plating Yeast Selecting Colonies

A great source for cheap agar agar would be to go to an Asian grocery store. They sell it in little 1 oz packets for about $1-2 and that way you don't need to buy anything expensive online.

For petri dishes, just look online or find a local sciencey type store. In Chicago, we have American Science & Surplus and they have tons of great glassware and other stuff.

As for an inoculation loop, I made two awesome ones from pieces of Ni-chrome wire and small SS tubing handles maybe 3 years ago when I started culturing yeasts. The website I used for inspiration is here: https://www.shroomology.org/topic/1105-inoculation-loops/ *Disclaimer* Disregard that link's true purpose of promoting hallucinogens and use it only for the purpose of making a very nice inoculation loop that will serve you well for years to come. The two I made have been going strong for several years now and work fantastically for inoculating, spreading, and isolating yeast cultures onto both petri dishes/plates and slant tubes. Take a peek at the attached image of my loops shortly after I made them out of 24 gauge ni-chrome wire and before I put them into a suitable handle. For a handle, I just slid them into the end of a short 8-10" piece of SS tube and crimped/hammered them into place. I don't have a pic of them with their handle on this laptop, but maybe I'll get industrious and write up a how-to for HBT, so others don't have to visit the deeper darker recesses of the net to find info on that other website.

inoculationloops.jpg
 
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fc36 said:
OP, please look at the following two articles for some advice.

Collecting Wild Yeast

Plating Yeast Selecting Colonies

Also, a great source for cheap agar agar would be to go to an Asian grocery store. They sell it in little 1 oz packets for about $1-2 and that way you don't need to buy anything expensive online. For petri dishes, just look online or find a local sciencey type store. In Chicago, we have American Science & Surplus and they have tons of great glassware and other stuff. As for an inoculation loop, I made two awesome ones from pieces of Ni-chrome wire and small SS tubing. The website I used for inspiration is here: https://www.shroomology.org/topic/1105-inoculation-loops/ *Disclaimer* Disregard that last website link's true purpose of promoting hallucinogens and use it only for the purpose of making a very nice inoculation loop that will serve you well for years to come. The two I made have been going strong for several years now. Take a peek at the attached image. I just took the two I made from 24 gauge ni-chrome wire and hammered them into a short 8-10" piece of 1/8" SS tube. I don't have a pic of them with their handle, but maybe I'll get industrious and write up a how-to for HBT, so others don't have to visit the deeper darker recesses of the net to find info on that other website.
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That was one trip'n web site! ;)
 
Aerolite said:
Horde Mug = Aerolite
-Tasted Great! Very bready, funky, and a bit tangy. My best guess is a mix of classic yeast, brett, and lacto. Certainly not 100% sure of this, but that's my gut feeling. Didn't notice very much fruit or spice coming from the culture. Honestly... tasted and smelled like Aerolite himself.
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1) I don't want to know how you know what your cat tastes like.
2) You are not allowed in my house. I have cats and I don't want you tasting them.
 
LandoLincoln said:
1) I don't want to know how you know what your cat tastes like.
2) You are not allowed in my house. I have cats and I don't want you tasting them.
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:off: sort of... In college I had a cat that started sleeping between my head and the headboard each night during the winter. As summer approached that was getting a bit too hot. When I felt the cat jump on the bed, as usual, I then eased my head up against the head board so the cat would see there was no space and start sleeping somewhere else. The cat walked up to the head board, as usual, then paused (pawsed?). I could almost hear the gears turning in her head. She stepped across my head and laid her fat fury belly on my face! I was so dumbstruck I slid down to give back her usual spot...and for me fresh air.

So, in a way, I have tasted my cat!
 
fc36 said:
Quick question...I understand the need to try and find wild or rare yeast, but why, why, Why, WHY, WHYYYYYYYYYY would you throw cat fur, whole, into wort and try and taste it? Why not just take a swab from your cats and see if it cultures onto a simple petri dish of agar and starter wort jelly mixture? That way you can at least isolate healthy looking colonies and avoid the ones that are obviously mold or just downright nasty.
Click to expand...

Well, I considered that method. In the end I didn't care to be that picky regarding the culture. I didn't drink the first one I put the fur in anyhow. I made sure that the first go had a decent smell. Then did a secondary propagation (The one I fancied a taste from).

His initially had a small spot of mold, which is why I didn't taste the first go (Also I didn't want to drink any of the fur itself). I made sure during collection that I avoided the small spot of mold. Also - the second propagation was watched very closely and smelled often to see if it would be good to taste. I was going to do a third propagation before tasting, but my Fiance really wanted to see if they were good.

I'd like to say I'm more traditional and wanted it to be more like an open fermentation, but honestly I just preferred to do it this way. I wanted to catch more of the 'essence of cat' than get a certain yeast or bacterium from them. In the end, I now have a delicious culture that honestly smells and tastes similar to burying your face into Aerolite's fur. Couldn't tell you exactly what was in the mix, but I'm still alive and didn't feel ill at all after drinking a sample. Mission accomplished :)
 
LandoLincoln said:
1) I don't want to know how you know what your cat tastes like.
2) You are not allowed in my house. I have cats and I don't want you tasting them.
Click to expand...

You've never buried your face in their big soft bellies and breathed a few times? You get a nice olfactory sense of them. Aero tends to smell of graham crackers or slightly of cinnamon (Especially around the ears <3). Luna grooms super often so she just smells of cat food and mucus. We love her anyway!
 
I have to admit, when I first saw the thread title my first though was of the intellectual nature of cats, and then it turned out even better than I could have ever hoped!
 
One of the best threads on HBT! BTW, the 1st episode of Brewdogs involves the 3 brewers immersing themselves in a vat of wort before fermenting it.
 

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