Can I culture yeast from Juniper Berries?

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Fellow brewers, here's the latest on this yeast;
I kegged the 80/ a couple weeks ago (bottled a sixer), it didn't attenuate any further and ended at 1.012. It's decent, nothing special, but is almost gone already, we had a reunion of sorts and everyone liked it even as green as it is.
4876582416_3eca77e733.jpg


The two test batches have finally finished after numerous swirlings, etc. The 11% test actually fermented further than predicted and ended at 1.010 making it appx. 13.96%
4876582878_94aaf0016b.jpg

Tasted decent, so I bottled it. and washed the yeast.
4875975689_367acbf855.jpg


The 17% batch stopped at 1.060 making it appx. 15.05%, so I'm concluding this is the limit of the yeast, both batches were in the same spot fermenting from 80F down to 75F in the last few days.
4875974759_2e52affc2e.jpg

It tasted surprisingly balanced, so I bottled it also, I washed the yeast but don't think it will be very healthy.
4875975247_185ff46cbb.jpg


The cherry wine fermentation has ceased and I pressed the cherries, will wait for this to settle and then start racking.

If it warms up again I plan on trying this yeast at saison temps (85F-95F) and have purchased some wyeast saison to compare it to, a lagering comparison is also in the plans.

So far I'm calling this yeast a success, I half expected to see some lactobacilus and/or brettanomyces or other sour type fermentation, but have yet to see any. This makes me happy!!

Keep on yeasting my friends:mug:
 
COLO, I have been following this tread since you started it. Last weekend, I tried my hand at capturing some wild Eugene, Oregon yeast from a plum tree in my front yard. Actually, I'm not sure if they are plums or not. They look like large cherries, but taste a lot like plums. Anyway, I've noticed that the plums(?) all have a thin, white-ish coating which I assumed was either wild yeast or car exhaust.

On Saturday, I built a 1 quart 1.040 starter in a growler and dropped about a dozen plums into it. All the plums were windfalls and well-past ripe. I hadn't been paying attention for the last couple weeks, and in that time, the tree had dropped all it's fruit. I have been shaking the growler several times a day since Saturday afternoon. I now have a heavy layer of sediment in the bottle that is either yeast or plum(?) guts. I have yet to get a krausen , but there are foamy splotches floating ontop the wort.

When I checked it this morning, there was a strong yeasty smell, so I think something is happening. I plan to let it go a day or two longer, then if there are still no signs of infection, crash, decant and pitch into a fresh 1/2 gal starter.

Cheers!
Kevin
 
It's decent, nothing special
Click to expand...
Gotta disagree with you on that; it's special because you isolated a good brewing yeast from the wilds of the juniper patch, following on the same trails our ancestral brewers did, until Louis Pasteur arrived on the scene. Seems alright to me.
Thanks for keeping us informed.
Cheers.
 
beerandcoding said:
. . . . . I have been shaking the growler several times a day since Saturday afternoon. I now have a heavy layer of sediment in the bottle that is either yeast or plum(?) guts. I have yet to get a krausen , but there are foamy splotches floating ontop the wort.

When I checked it this morning, there was a strong yeasty smell, so I think something is happening. I plan to let it go a day or two longer, then if there are still no signs of infection, crash, decant and pitch into a fresh 1/2 gal starter.

Cheers!
Kevin
Click to expand...

That is awesome, I'm certain you have yeast, it will show up better in your next starter wort. I'm wondering if your yeast will be more alcohol tollerant similar to grape yeasts, be patient and keep us informed. Something I wish I had done was save more of the initial "mother" yeast for future use, so you may want to keep that in mind, I do have some but will have to propagate from starters again after I use up the washed stuff (a few generations I'm guessing).

Keep on yeasting my friends:mug:

JohnMc and passedpawn, thanx for the compliments, it's all part of the "plan":D
 
COLO, good idea about the "mother" yeast. I had planned on stepping up the starter, then using it on an upcoming brew. Now, I think I'll try to build the starter up until I have enough yeast to wash several jars worth first.

I'll also try to get some pics up on my website in the next few days.

FYI, I have been keeping my starter in the 70-75(F) range.

Cheers!
Kevin
 
All these pictures of wild yeast starters gave me the bug! Got one starter going with yeast harvested from a crab apple and another from a wild pear tree. Though I was thinking, would hops have any wild yeasts on them? There are tons of feral hops growing around here, so I figure it would be pretty cool to make a beer from 100% local ingredients (that is if my homemade malt is any good)!
 
**Update**

After stepping my wild yeast starter up to 1/2 gallon, I thought I got an infection. Every time I would give the starter a shake, small whitish splotches would develop within a couple hours. After a few days of this, I decided to stop agitating the starter late last week and just let it go. Coincidentally, the heat spiked in Oregon at about the same time and my starter has been sitting unattended in a room, fluctuating between 75-85(F).

When I looked at my starter after work today, I noticed a 1/4" thick krausen that either grew from or is new covering the white spots. I can also "hear" the starter working; little pops when bubbles break on the surface. I will try to pull a hydro sample tonight to see where the gravity is and if I can detect an infection. If everything is still going well, I'll wait for the krausen to fall and and divide the yeast into several new starters.

I also want to mention that I picked up a new (to me) immersion chiller yesterday from a nice local guy who was moving. He threw in over a pound of cascade, magnum and chinook hops, harvested last year from his yard. Like bierhaus, my plan now is to brew a beer with these hops and my captured yeast.

Cheers!
Kevin
 
beerandcoding said:
. . . . small whitish splotches would develop within a couple hours. . . . . .
Click to expand...

Sounds like yeast rafts, (very fine co2 bubbles) were you able to look at them very closely? Glad you have krausen, and thanx for the update, keep them coming.:mug:

Edit: Are there any maltings in Oregon? If so, maybe you can brew a truly oregon beer, or you may have to wait for some of Rogue's malts, you anywhere near the Tygh Valley appelation? http://brewpublic.com/tag/malting/ Or better yet, maybe they will want some of your local yeast, they seem to be into the self sustaining groove.

Edit2: Nice blog Kevin, I like your "local yeast beer swap" idea.:mug:
 
COLObrewer said:
Sounds like yeast rafts...
Click to expand...

That's probably correct. I was a little concerned because I thought I detected a slightly sour aroma, but it is completely gone now. I suppose tasting it is the only way to know for sure. I didn't get a chance last night, but I will try to pull a hydro sample after work.

As for Oregon malts, I think Rogue's Risk and Dare are my best bet; Tygh Valley is a few hours away. As far as I know Rogue hasn't started selling their malts yet, but I believe a few people have come into possession of them. My other option is to find someone who is doing some backyard, or more likely back-forty growing. I have seen a few people on this board growing/malting their own, but no one around me. Oh well, Great Western is in Idaho, so at worst I would be keeping it in Cascadia.

Cheers!
Kevin
 
Oh, forgot to mention that Rogue has a brewery in Eugene, the Eugene City Brewery. Instead of Rogue's Pacman yeast, the ECB brewmaster (Natos on this board) uses a self-cultured yeast on all his Track Town Ales. Although I believe it was derived from a commercial strain. Still cool though.

Cheers!
Kevin
 
I am really intrigued with this thread!! Not only are there junipers in my front yard, but my hops are coming right along too!

I'm going to see if I can get this to work. I may try to harvest yeast off of pawpaws this fall as well. The fruits tend to be pretty waxy, and are dusted with what I assume to be yeast.
 
**Update**

I took a hydro sample of my wild yeast starter last night. It is down to 1.014, so there is definitely something eating sugar in there. I tasted the sample and it was surprisingly lemony. Not sure what to make of it. I don't think it was a lacto infection; I've done a sour mash before and it tasted nothing like this. Maybe a combination of yeast esters/phenols and Columbus hops I boiled for 10 minutes in the starter?

In any case, I moved the starter to the fridge last night. I'll give it a day or two to settle, then decant and harvest the yeast into a few jars for new starts. If the yeast can produce this flavor again, I see it being good in an American Wheat or Pale Ale. I was already planning to do an American Wheat with a few pounds of rauchmalt. Maybe I'll scale the recipe down for my 2 gallon fermentor and try it on this yeast instead of the planned Wyeast 1007. I would go 5 gallon, but I want to keep this yeast away from my normal equipment until I can verify that there is no infection.

Oh, and Phalex, go for it!

Cheers!
Kevin
 
A few thoughts on yeast:

1) The whitish coating on fruit is not yeast -- at least, it's no more yeast than is everywhere. It is called 'bloom', is produced by the plant, and consists mostly of wax.

That said, yeast (including <i>S. cerevisiae</I>, as well as many others) is everywhere, and you'll certainly never find a fruit or cone (as in juniper) lacking in it. It will also be coated in bacteria, needless to say.

2) There is no easy way to separate bacteria from yeast. Endless subculturing on agar plates might do it eventually, but I doubt it. This technique works much better in filamentous fungi than in yeast. Chlorine dioxide, lactic acid, etc, will all kill both. Since bacteria exist in far greater numbers than yeast, killing both is unlikely to get you to a pure yeast sample. Antibiotic agar will isolate yeast from bacteria fairly well, and this is how it is normally done. You can buy antibiotic agar fairly easily online.
 
The neat thing about fermentation of juice and wort is that it tends to encourage yeast over other stuff, IIRC, Jean-Xavier Guinard makes this point in the Classic Beer style Series #3, Lambic.
This is just a tendency, if a test batch tastes good, it probably happened.
There is no easy way to separate bacteria from yeast.
Click to expand...
With good technique, one can isolate single colonies on one streak plate or use Hansen's pure culture technique. Then pick some of the single colonies onto secondary plates and test some. If one performs as desired, then keep it.
 
JohnMc said:
With good technique, one can isolate single colonies on one streak plate
Click to expand...

I know that this is widely believed here, but after many thousands of subcultured plates in my academic life, I really doubt it's true. In my experience (and in "the conventional view" of it within microbiology), the yeast cells are reliably filthy with thousands of bacteria. It may not be visible without a microscope, or grow voraciously on the plate, but they've always been there when I looked (and, more distressingly, used the culture later). It is not surprising, in the end -- S. cervisiae is (very roughtly) fifty times bigger than bacteria, and bacteria are overwhelmingly more common, by a few orders of magnitude. Given enough diligence, and extremely good sterile technique there's no reason you couldn't manage it eventually, but it would be enormously time consuming and difficult. It's not as though it would amount to streaking the wort across the plate and grabbing a promising colony -- you'd need to do this hundreds of times before you managed to get a colony free of bacteria. (Much easier just to use antibiotic agar, in my eyes.)

It is not necessary that I convince anyone, though.

JohnMc said:
or use Hansen's pure culture technique. Then pick some of the single colonies onto secondary plates and test some. If one performs as desired, then keep it.
Click to expand...

Certainly. But note that I originally said that there was no easy way to do it. Serial dilution subculturing is not easy by anyone's standards, even ignoring the difficulty of keeping hundreds of cultures sterile without access to a lab.
 
(Much easier just to use antibiotic agar, in my eyes.)
Click to expand...
True, but folks got this type of thing done before antibiotics and even the use of agar. Again, a part of that is just that, according to Guinard, yeast dominate the microflora from two weeks to a couple of months. I'd bet it's pretty reasonable to try it at that time vs. any other. Likely though if I were to do it, I'd follow your advice and plate on YPD supplemented with carbenicillin.

This thread got me to look at Hansen's book on google books. It's fun to read, his style reads pretty well. One of the links from that page showed somebody's reprinting it for less than $20; it's tempting, paper copies being so retro and all. :)
 
JohnMc said:
True, but folks got this type of thing done before antibiotics and even the use of agar. Again, a part of that is just that, according to Guinard, yeast dominate the microflora from two weeks to a couple of months. I'd bet it's pretty reasonable to try it at that time vs. any other. Likely though if I were to do it, I'd follow your advice and plate on YPD supplemented with carbenicillin.
Click to expand...

They did, yes, but it wasn't easy. It was fantastically difficult, which is why we both know the name of the first guy who managed it.

Carbenicillin probably wouldn't be a good choice for home use. It's heat labile, and wouldn't survive pressure cooking. (In the lab it's added to agar after it's been sterilized, under a laminar flowhood using a filter to sterilize the carbenicillin.) Gentamicin would probably be the best option. It's much more heat tolerant than any other common antibiotic. I know from personal experience (read "impatience in the lab one day") that tetracyclin is also less sensitive than its manufacturers would have you believe, and works well enough after fifteen minutes in the autoclave. Some bacteria still grow on it afterward, but it's rare enough that it's not a huge problem.
 
(In the lab it's added to agar after it's been sterilized, under a laminar flowhood using a filter to sterilize the carbenicillin.)
Click to expand...
Yep, I used to do it all the time for LB and usually didn't bother with the hood. (In a relatively clean environment, I can pour antibiotic free rich media without contamination on the bench.) But now we just buy our plates from Teknova. It still feels like cheating sometimes, but it's nice just to walk to a cold room full of plates and media and grab some.

FWIW, I think if we want to continue this discussion, it's probably best to start a new thread. Or is it not off topic?
 
Just a quick update;
We brewed up a sweet stout yesterday and used some 2nd gen washed yeast from the 80/ brew, it is rocking this morning. 68F.
4920296142_7e04dcb4ca_b.jpg


Used fermcap on this one so it may not have much krausen.
4919697541_4eb25e68df_b.jpg


Keep on yeasting my friends:mug:
 
QUOTE "What? Are you fermenting in cave!?!"

The picutre reminds me of Silence of the Lambs - shiver...

Awesome thread and experiment though - hats off to you.
 
Quote"The picture reminds me of Silence of the Lambs - shiver..."

Ha ha ....It puts the yeast in the carboy....
 
A cave, I love it!
I am very curious now. I want to try the juniper berries but I am also looking at the venrable Oregon Grape! The fruit is very tart but they have a lot of "white stuff" on them and there are a lot of them around!

After doing a little reading I was wondering if a 10-15 minute soak in straight lemon juice followed by a rinse in sterile water would remove a large amount of bacteria?

I am aware that a lot of common bacteria do not do well in a low PH environment nor do they tolerate dramatic changes in PH. Most yeast do not seem to be affected by a low PH environment and should remain!

Any thoughts?
 
What? Are you fermenting in cave!?!
Click to expand...
Looks like some of the crawl spaces I've seen in NC. :)
I am aware that a lot of common bacteria do not do well in a low PH environment nor do they tolerate dramatic changes in PH. Most yeast do not seem to be affected by a low PH environment and should remain!
Click to expand...
Kevin, that's one of the reasons fermentation selects for yeast, there's a drop in pH. Also, acid washing is something pro brewers do.
 
what you are saying is true in theory, but in practice colo brewed 4 beers with a juniper berry! so whats is the point?
it can be done and easly .
i do it every year, i brew wild cider with apples from my trees.
and the conditions in an agar plate are nothing like a fermenter unless you greatly lower ther ph of the agar and seal the dish so that it is anaerobic, thoes two things make a HUGE difference in what grows and at what speed, that plus controlling the temp ( keeping it low for the first few starters) and you can can take lactobacillus out of play too

ni* said:
I know that this is widely believed here, but after many thousands of subcultured plates in my academic life, I really doubt it's true. In my experience (and in "the conventional view" of it within microbiology), the yeast cells are reliably filthy with thousands of bacteria. It may not be visible without a microscope, or grow voraciously on the plate, but they've always been there when I looked (and, more distressingly, used the culture later). It is not surprising, in the end -- S. cervisiae is (very roughtly) fifty times bigger than bacteria, and bacteria are overwhelmingly more common, by a few orders of magnitude. Given enough diligence, and extremely good sterile technique there's no reason you couldn't manage it eventually, but it would be enormously time consuming and difficult. It's not as though it would amount to streaking the wort across the plate and grabbing a promising colony -- you'd need to do this hundreds of times before you managed to get a colony free of bacteria. (Much easier just to use antibiotic agar, in my eyes.)

It is not necessary that I convince anyone, though.



Certainly. But note that I originally said that there was no easy way to do it. Serial dilution subculturing is not easy by anyone's standards, even ignoring the difficulty of keeping hundreds of cultures sterile without access to a lab.
Click to expand...
 
I stepped up the 250ml juniper berry starter to a 2L starter (in a 4L flask). That spun for a few days, then I chilled it, and you can see the nice 1/2" of yeast that grew off those berries!

Decanted and pitched into a 1.040 wort that I party-gyled off a 12g batch of IPA. Pic below is that beer after 2 days. Nice full krausen on it. Actually this beer was going strong about 12 hours after pitching.

2L_Juniper_Starter.JPG
Juniper_Ale_-_Day_2.JPG
 
passedpawn said:
I stepped up the 250ml juniper berry starter to a 2L starter (in a 4L flask). That spun for a few days, then I chilled it, and you can see the nice 1/2" of yeast that grew off those berries!

Decanted and pitched into a 1.040 wort that I party-gyled off a 12g batch of IPA. Pic below is that beer after 2 days. Nice full krausen on it. Actually this beer was going strong about 12 hours after pitching.
Click to expand...

That is awesome, I was wondering if this was a one time fluke or if it was going to be repeatable. I guess that answers that.

Keep us up to date on this IPA, I'd like to know how the yeast performs for you, it appears you have a nice strong fermentation going. What temperature is it at?:rockin:

I don't have much else to report on my dealings with it right now, the sweet stout is about done in primary and I will rack it soon to get at the yeast there for more testing. Haven't racked the cherry wine yet, and tasted a bottle of the scottish this weekend, it seems to be holding up.

I've been reading up a little, just some interesting stuff, I noticed while reading back through Hieronymus' "brew like a monk" that Duvel used one strain of appx. 10 - 20 strains isolated from a bottle of McEwans scotch ale after world war one. I'm not sure what this has to do with me, just thought it was interesting, and the fact that I will probably start isolating/separating yeasts from this stuff, assuming it will need it? For instance, top cropping for ale, cold fermenting for lager, hot fermenting for saison, wheat fermenting for wheat? etc, etc,

Keep on yeasting my friends:mug:
 
I'm really excited about this topic. Being in Oklahoma where the Easter Red Cedar is an infectious, rampant pest, it is easy for me to just walk into my backyard for a fresh sample. Do you know the variety of the berries you chose?

Colo, I'm going back to Golden two weeks from now for a friend's wedding. You fancy visitors wherever you are? This looks worth a trip to see your setup!

~William
 

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