Spongy Wild Yeast/Bacteria in Carboy

[Gerald Godwin]

Hello All,

I recently made my first attempt at wild yeast harvesting and fermentation. I put a few jars of lightly hopped 1.040 wort outside my house overnight, and let them ferment away for about a month with the lids loosely on top. After that, I made some agar plates and streaked them each out, let them grow, and picked two specific colonies from each to streak out on their own plates. After this, I stepped them up through a test tube, 250 mL flask, and then a full liter, and pitched them into two three gallon carboys.

I am now just over 48 hours post-pitch, and these look nothing like I have ever seen before. Both of them look about the same, but the growth looks like a sponge. It started out towards the top of the fermentor, but has since sunk to the bottom. Does this sound or look normal?

Here it is after about 24 hours.

And here is a closeup of it at that time.

And here it is after 48.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Does this sound or look normal?

What is normal? What you have may not even be Saccharomyces.

The unpredictability is part of the fun, right?

Looks cool, hope it tastes good!
Cheers!

 

[IslandLizard]

Did the starters exhibit anything similar?
Have you tasted the starter beer? It must have been decent enough to warrant 3 gallon batches of each.

A few of my mixed cultures have produced some gnarly creatures over time. The one containing a large amount of Pediococcus was probably the most interesting.
I also never really knew what a diacetyl bomb smelled and tasted like until then. Oh, man!

 

[Miraculix]

Interesting!!

 

[Funky Frank]

Any updates?

 

[OnePlate]

I'm curious about this too!