"Organic" - all natural brews

[OdinsWolf]

My hat is off to all of your knowledge in here, there's some great minds!
I would like to make organic brews. I'm interested in Mead and apple cyser/apple brews more than anything right now. I really like the idea of wild fermentation because there's nothing more natural than that, and I've had success with it with the handful of brews I've done so far.

Questions:
1. Is there an organic yeast or something very close to it (non-gmo) that anyone has used with success?
2. Can I take some of a wild-fermented brew and "capture" that strain so to speak for continual use down the road?
3. Is there a likely chance that I can just keep wild-fermenting my brews with a high rate of success?
4. Does anybody have any solid advice for me?
I'm using a 6.5 g glass carboy and half gallon Mason jars until I can afford more carboys. Ive just been putting some organic juice in, measuring my organic sugar and adding measured amounts of organic fruits and letting it do its thing. If I could find a good organic/non-gmo yeast i could use to speed things along or at least be educated in a way to make it as natural as possible I would greatly appreciate it.
Also for what it's worth I strongly prefer carbonation!

Thank you all in advance for your time and help!

 

[RPh_Guy]

1. To my knowledge, all available yeast is non-GMO.
2. Absolutely. That's how all the commercial yeasts were obtained.
3. Depends on your definition of "high rate". Wild ferments are unpredictable. Since you've had success so far, there's no reason to stop.
4. Making multiple wild starters and selecting the best from among those will drastically increase your chance of success.
Drink it young to avoid vinegar.

Also for what it's worth I strongly prefer carbonation!

Do you have a question about this? Bottle carbonation is fairly easy.

 

[OdinsWolf]

I accidently posted twice and can't find a delete button.

 

[OdinsWolf]

Thank you for your response.
How do I capture and preserve a strain?
And what do you recommend for drinking it young time-wise? And I assume you mean just for wild-brews?
Carbonation - Would it be possible to bottle during the end stages of a primary and skip racking it, or maybe racking once for a short while and bottling? So a little fermentation might still be taking place, enough to carbonate?

 

[RPh_Guy]

MTF is our friend
http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Wild_Yeast_Isolation

There are lots of different ways to do things. Ask if you have questions!
IMO the most simple method of culture storage is to keep a jar going and feed it every couple months.

Drink young as in with 6 months or so after bottling, longer if you store cold. "Normal" brewing practices tend to prevent vinegar formation. "Wild" fermentations are prone to developing acetic acid given enough time, and especially with oxygen and heat.
The length of time depends on your process, packaging, and storage conditions, as well as your luck with whatever microbes are involved.

Carbonation: Once fermentation completes I usually rack to another vessel (AKA bottling bucket) so I can bulk prime and then immediately bottle from there.

 

[TGFV]

Two things I want to add,

1) Imperial yeast is certified organic since you asked if there is any.

2) with wild yeasts the longer you keep using the strain the more I am pretty sure it will mutate/change/alter since it is a wider variety of species that multiply at different rates in comparison to commercial yeast.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

1. To my knowledge, all available yeast is non-GMO.
2. Absolutely. That's how all the commercial yeasts were obtained.

Saying that is like saying all dogs were obtained from wild wolves, so you can just go out and find a wolf and it will be as tame as Fido. Modern brewery yeast have been domesticated over centuries, the average wild yeast brews about as well as say a bread yeast - they have low alcohol tolerance, poor flocculation, and produce off-flavours. Modern yeasts have had those traits bred out of them. Plus they're being produced in lab conditions so behave a lot more consistently.

I appreciate the ambition to use wild yeast, but I'd suggest making a batch with commercial yeast in the first instance, just to hone your craft and remove a massive source of risk in the process. As has been mentioned, Imperial are certified organic, but frankly if you take one colony of any commercial yeast and grow it up in organic medium then any "non-organic" component is going to be within commercial standards for organic-ness. Hell, if certification isn't important then 10g of yeast in 18,927g (5 US gallons) of wort/juice is hardly significant, but I get how it's important for some people.

Then you can do a small test brew with wild yeast alongside, and learn aboout yeast ranching without risking your main batch.

 

[TGFV]

Northern Brewer has some good points there (though bread yeast actually has a higher than average ale yeast abv tolerance, roughly 14% from what I remember).

While most original alcoholic drink was made with wild yeast, the brewer was often brewing in the same barn/building and using the wild yeast in that close localized location, which over the years/decades/centuries would result in a relatively stable strain, often based on the local strains of the region.

That alone would separate the process from most modern wild brewing compared to traditional brewing, at least imo.

It wasn't until we knew what yeast was that people started purposefully cultivating yeast, and to be honest it happened very differently in different countries.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Well I was talking about wild yeast having low alcohol tolerance, people seem to report bread yeast being all over the shop, from very low to 12-14% from certain strains when repitched. But anyway, that wasn't really the point, which was that wild yeast on its own tends not to be great for brewing (but people can get good results, it's just a bit of a lottery - and you have to bear in mind that cultivated yeast can spread long distances from eg winery operations, so "wild" yeast may not be so wild.)

 

[radwizard]

Honestly, If you are just starting out and you wanna go wild, funky and organic - I would suggest using an Organic commercial pitch of Brett (Imperial Yeast Suburban Brett) to ferment your juice. The chances of coming out with a great tasting batch would be greater.

If you want to try to capture your wild local yeast, do so on a smaller scale. Research on MTF and check out Bootleg Biology. There are risks involved in the wild yeast game.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Some people love to hate wild brewing.
I think they missed this:

I really like the idea of wild fermentation because there's nothing more natural than that, and I've had success with it with the handful of brews I've done so far.

So I don't know why they're trying to talk you out of it. Or did I misinterpret and you haven't done wild batches yet?

Considering the large number of success stories I hear with wild fermented beer, cider, wine, and mead it's certainly a valid option. Risky? Yes, you will get some bad results, but it's not as doomed as some make it sound.

Making multiple starters is the best way to minimize that risk of bad off-flavors.
Luckily, Brettanomyces may eliminate a lot of those potential off-flavors too.

BTW I did not say that wild yeast will behave the same as a domesticated yeast. I think that goes without saying that they will be different.

Commercial yeast is undoubtedly the safer way to go. There's no denying that.
Is brewing about being safe? That's a choice you make. If you want to roll the dice and don't mind dumping some batches, your wild fermentation efforts will be rewarded.

Modern brewery yeast have been domesticated over centuries

Wyeast 1450. How old is Denny?!?

You're talking about clean strains and single isolates, not mixed fermentation strains. It's a whole different animal.
Any halfway decent professional brewery making (mixed fermentation) sours is using wild microbes to some extent, whether by choice or not. Coolships (koelschips) are a thing for beer.
Wine, cider, and mead also have a long tradition of wild yeast influence.

 

[OdinsWolf]

You all have given me things to think about so far and I appreciate it!

 

[Bubbles2]

Organic Brewer here, however Organic is not 100% unless you are growing your own. Look up Organic standards.
GMO- This is usually referred to as a plant that is a proxy for Round-up / Glysophate. Wheat(s), Soy, chocolate, etc.
Creating an F-1 Strain with desired traits in my opinion is not GMO, rather taking the best of certain characteristics. Like Grafting a Meyer's Lemon or a multi graft for that matter. If all were "organic" although the tree has been 'technically' genetically modified, is it not still organic origin? A debate for another forum.

There is a yeast out there that has been modified to not need Hops where their residual breakdown leaves the beer with ABV and a Hop taste. Not sure if that is GMO's or F-1 strain. Where a Galaxy hop brings grapefruit flavor, and bred with another to create even more citrus flavor would fall into your 'blanket' GMO label. "The Dog is a poor example". More like F-1 from breeding. That is how Styrian Golding and Northern Brewer hops were created via breeding.

I Compost my Cake along with everything else, and if you were to be capturing 'free yeast' you would be capturing what is airborne from my yard, or the strip club, if you live near one, or in a house full of woman.... I use SAF 05 dry, being made for long before GMO came about, I would expect it is their F-1 design that can attenuate and finish dry as I like it.

 

[RPh_Guy]

I'm just going to mention some things. Take it or leave it, not trying to offend anyone.

To me "organic" (which includes non-GMO by definition) means produced without "unnatural" pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, antibiotics, hormones, etc...
The "organic" craze/movement is about reducing human intake of unnatural chemicals. That seems fair. However, organic beer sounds funny to me because ethanol itself is a known toxin.
The only reason non-GMO gets lumped as a subset of organic is because the GMO crops are sprayed with large amounts of herbicide (Round-Up). I'm also using the narrow definition like @Bubbles2 .

So (as others here have said), if you can find organic malt and hops, the yeast is irrelevant because you provide the growth environment yourself. If you provided an "organic" growth medium, you'll have "organic yeast" regardless of how you obtained it.

Wild yeast is perhaps a more natural approach to fermentation (and very cool imo), but it doesn't in any way reduce your consumption of unnatural chemicals than you'd have with a commercial yeast.
Natural for natural's sake would be like saying you don't want to use barley that was planted in a field, but rather is found in the wild. There's no real reason imo to go overboard following the "natural is always better" train all the way to completion. You'd end up living in a cave, probably without beer

the strip club, if you live near one, or in a house full of woman

LOL, sounds like these are bigger problems