Collecting Culture from My Cats

[SnakeRidge]

Reading up on wasps / hornets and their role in wild yeast. It would be better to mine for yeast out of their guts instead of wrangling your cat dander

You want to milk a hornet?

 

[JINKS]

Dagnabit I'm subscribing, gotta see if this ends in a CATastrophe.

 

[1977Brewer]

Dagnabit I'm subscribing, gotta see if this ends in a CATastrophe.

I'm in just to keep Tabbies.

 

[Aerolite]

Thanks for subscribing! I'm looking forward to what will come out of all this. My stomach does turn a little when I think of the culture source, but my fiance has a cast-iron stomach. She volunteers for the first sniffs and tastes of all the steps.

So far. The smell is bready (yeasty), funky, and slightly lactic. Smells oddly good and sweet. I'm guessing the sweet smell will dwindly as fermentation completes.

I'll be sure to post an update in a week or so when the swimmers settle out and I crash it before collecting the culture. The question for now is how many test propagations I do before I attempt a temperature controlled, drinkable batch.

 

[Aerolite]

This needs an article - a well written article, properly punctuated, and grammatically correct article.


...with pictures of course......

I would love to put something like this together. Unfortunately, I have little time to do this and lack experience in writing fetching articles.

If anyone wants to help - I'd gladly collaborate on a more detailed and visually appealing write-up.

 

[Auger]

edit: hah wrong thread.

interesting idea though.

 

[DNKDUKE]

I would love to put something like this together. Unfortunately, I have little time to do this and lack experience in writing fetching articles.

If anyone wants to help - I'd gladly collaborate on a more detailed and visually appealing write-up.

That's OK...I wasn't serious...
The comment was meant for those following another post....

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?p=6852111#post6852111

 

[stratslinger]

<cringe>

There's brewer's yeast - that, you know, you brew with.

And then there's that.

Don't do that. For the love of all that's holy, just don't.

Edit: sorry, this was in response to Auger's post. Yuck.

 

[PlexVector]

Dagnabit I'm subscribing, gotta see if this ends in a CATastrophe.

I'm in just to keep Tabbies.

I'm just going to wait till the end and then read the whole kittencoboodle at once.

 

[ba-brewer]

Thanks for subscribing! I'm looking forward to what will come out of all this. My stomach does turn a little when I think of the culture source, but my fiance has a cast-iron stomach. She volunteers for the first sniffs and tastes of all the steps.

So far. The smell is bready (yeasty), funky, and slightly lactic. Smells oddly good and sweet. I'm guessing the sweet smell will dwindly as fermentation completes.

I'll be sure to post an update in a week or so when the swimmers settle out and I crash it before collecting the culture. The question for now is how many test propagations I do before I attempt a temperature controlled, drinkable batch.

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.

 

[Brauer]

Call it "Cats got your tongue" and while your at it, use cat nip instead of hops in the boil.
Cats are disgusting! &#128572;

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

I think your results will be cat-a-strophic.

 

[kev211]

This is disgusting. So Im subscribing cuz I really want to see how it turns out...

 

[ukaH]

sub'd.

 

[drainbamage]

Call it "Cats got your tongue" and while your at it, use cat nip instead of hops in the boil.
Cats are disgusting! &#128572;

Don't do that! Then the cat will drink it all...or knock the glass over and roll in it.

 

[foodplusbeer]

I'd drink some Cat-a-tonic

 

[kev211]

Don't do that! Then the cat will drink it all...or knock the glass over and roll in it.

Ya, but if the cat rolls in it he may get some secondary fermentation action...

 

[FiddlersGreen87]

For your next project you can culture Deez!

This is your future. I know this has nothing to do with huffing cat piss, but for the life of me I couldn't get this image out of my head. Thank you for ensuring no more work will get done today.

 

[bobojuice]

Stop doing this.

 

[MaxStout]

 

[jbord37]

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

 

[ArcaneXor]

Subscribing...

 

[NateLTB]

Sub'd

 

[Inkleg]

So with my hairless cat, should I just dunk the whole cat and leave it in until I see signs of fermentation?

 

[HumulusHead]

So with my hairless cat, should I just dunk the whole cat and leave it in until I see signs of fermentation?

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

 

[JINKS]

So with my hairless cat, should I just dunk the whole cat and leave it in until I see signs of fermentation?

Could be the catalyst for making someone catatonic.

 

[Aerolite]

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.

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.

 

[MaxStout]

Just be sure to hide that beer from the cat.

 

[ba-brewer]

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.

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?

 

[sweetcell]

or is there some character you hope to get from the result?

clearly the OP was going for the feline equivalent of "barnyard" or "horsey":

"litter box."