Howto: Capture Wild Yeast

[COLObrewer]

How about this senario; Can some fresh starter wort, let cool while still sealed, truck it to the juniper forest (miles away from your brew lab), sanitize the jar again and open the canned wort, aerate, pour wort into your sterilized starter flask and drop a juniper berry in, seal the starter with freshly sanitized bung and an airlock with vodka in it.

I guess the argument would be that some commercial yeast could have made it's way to the juniper forest and could be airbourne or could have stuck to the juniper berry? I would say that you are NEVER going to be able to ensure that you aren't getting a previously commercialized yeast. I would also state that there are so many different strains of commercial yeast that it would be cost prohibitive to test, who's to say that one of the commercial yeasts did not come from a juniper berry, one probably has.

My point is: Why worry about it, if it works it works.

 

[biodavid]

Id say that yeast would be pretty wild. I'd take at least three samples though. I found different cultures from the same tree had different profiles.

 

[Oldsock]

The September issue of BYO has the article I wrote on American Wild Ales, including some good tips on how Allagash. Russian River, and Jolly Pumpin do their spontaneous fermentations.

I just brewed a lambic over the weekend, I let it cool naturally uncovered in the brew pot, but pitched a starter made from 3 Fonteinen dregs when I moved it to a Better Bottle after 18 hours. After 36 hours there still isn't any visible fermentation, which is a bit disconcerting.

 

[louie0202]

Oldsock did it ever start fermenting?

 

[roymeo]

Just discovered this thread. Here's my first experiment:

Back in ~ February 2012 I made a batch of Imperial Stout. 5 gallons went into the bucket, but I'd made a bit extra so I siphoned out about 2/3rds a gallon while still pretty hot into a sanitized gallon jug (green glass, probably an old jug-wine jug) with a bit of cold water so the glass didn't break and sealed the jar up immediately. I put that in a cold bath while finishing up the rest of the batch and cleaning up the mess afterwards. Once I was done and convinced the jug was cooled down sufficiently (~1 am) I took the jug for a little ride to the top of Twin Peaks in San Francisco. I figured I'd have plenty of wind over some bit of nature on the upslope and only about 3 miles of city between me and the Pacific. I didn't worry about trying to re-sanitize, etc. Opened it up, heard the vacuum break with a woosh, and then as I had no idea if this was going to be enough, I put the jug in the wind (and away from the tourists) and sat in the car and read a magazine for about an hour. Sealed it up, took it home, topped it off with some more water to a gallon, and popped in the airlock. I never intentionally added any 'real' yeast or other microbes and did at least basic things to protect it from lingering yeast left over from use of the same tools. It did nothing for at least a week. Then about 10 days in--woosh. It fermented out fast and deep, ended up with something like a 1.002 reading. It tasted different than the regular batch for sure, but didn't taste wrong or off. I eventually got ~9 bottles out of it, brought some to the latest SF Homebrewer's Guild brew-share (along with another batch of that same Imperial Stout recipe) to share and I heard no complaints. The wild one is dryer tasting (as one would expect at 1.002 FG) Had someone that was there tell me last night they preferred the wild one.

I'm sure there's plenty of yeast around my apartment and brewing equipment that could have potentially gotten into it, but considering how different it tastes and how quickly and thorougly it fermented out once it caught, I assume it's gotten at least something else in it. I dunno if the native sourdough yeasts would act this way, either. Maybe Beach Chalet or Social Kitchen & Brewery sent something into the air upwind from my location.

I'm considering trying to harvest some yeast from a bottle and doing something larger with it.


I got the idea from reading about some brewer north of San Francisco putting beer hot/warm into 55 gallon drums and sealing them, driving them out to the redwoods after cooling, then opening up the airvent which sucks in a bunch of air, closing them up, driving them back home and afixing an airlock. That's how I remember the story anyway, don't remember the brewery nor whether Celebrator, BeerAdvocate, or one of the regional Brewing News.

 

[dinnerstick]

i am on my second attempt at a wild ferment 'starter', largely modeled on the description from oldsock's (excellent) blog. the first one i did, i made a 1.030ish wort from extract that was supposed to be hopped to 5 ibu or so just with normal (not old) pellets, but i realized afterwards that my scale was doing odd things, so i think it was higher. i cooled it and left it by the open window for a few hours on a warm night, then into an airlocked jug. it looked like it was starting to foam up after about 3 days but then it looked dead, and started to get black mold. i chucked it after 10 days. second one is 2L of 1.030 wort, very lightly hopped this time (for sure), boiled up and then put the still hot pot, covered with cheesecloth, outside on the rooftop patio on a cool evening, all night. in the morning poured to an airlocked jug, the only additional aeration was pouring through the funnel. 7 days later there is no visible anything going on in there. i was expecting some obvious signs of life at this point?? not sure what my question is

 

[Aschecte]

ericd I have a noob question about this and I apologize if this has already been asnswered but ith either your LG wort and open innoculation method or the agar slant method how does anyone know it's an actuall yeast fermentation and not bacterial ? Thanks.

 

[hunterlab]

So I gave this a shot I put a mason jar outside on Sunday for 4 hours. It had 1.030 wort I placed foil over the top after being outside. Just gave it a look and smell has sediment on the bottom and smells like stinky feet lol. Im guessing its got something going only time will tell.

 

[dinnerstick]

yep i left my 2L to go to town, under airlock, a week and a half so far. it is cloudy so it has stuff growing in it, nothing particularly nasty looking, but nothing obviously aerobic, i popped it open for a good (or otherwise) nostril-full and it's like a medium-stinky camembert, savory footy almost cooked corn smell. i have No Idea if this is good, bad, irrelevant, paradigm-shattering, .......

 

[Aschecte]

ok I'm gonna go for this today...... I'm going to leave the starter out for a bit in a mason jar. After i bring it in should I put it into a flask or bottle or something with a air lock ? or just leave it in the mason jar until I see bubbles uncovered then pitch it into the wort ? wouldn't it get oxidized or aceobater in it and oxygen to feed it if I left it open to oxygen for too long ?

Also, is there anything wrong with doing a mixture of dme and honey ? I kinda did a mixture as my dme mixture was way to low and I had no more dme so I added honey is that ok ?

 

[roymeo]

ok I'm gonna go for this today...... I'm going to leave the starter out for a bit in a mason jar. After i bring it in should I put it into a flask or bottle or something with a air lock ? or just leave it in the mason jar until I see bubbles uncovered then pitch it into the wort ? wouldn't it get oxidized or aceobater in it and oxygen to feed it if I left it open to oxygen for too long ?

Also, is there anything wrong with doing a mixture of dme and honey ? I kinda did a mixture as my dme mixture was way to low and I had no more dme so I added honey is that ok ?

Unless you boiled the honey long enough to kill anything it in, you could end up growing whatever was in/on the honey rather than whatever was in the air.

I'd put a loose fitting lid on the mason jar and put it on the kitchen counter so I could watch it, give it a shake, etc. (In fact that's what I'm doing with the sediment from my only-wild fermented Imp.Stout. right now.) You can also just get it under airlock and leave it alone, too. Try both.

 

[Aschecte]

Unless you boiled the honey long enough to kill anything it in, you could end up growing whatever was in/on the honey rather than whatever was in the air.

I'd put a loose fitting lid on the mason jar and put it on the kitchen counter so I could watch it, give it a shake, etc. (In fact that's what I'm doing with the sediment from my only-wild fermented Imp.Stout. right now.) You can also just get it under airlock and leave it alone, too. Try both.

Yeah that's the problem I started out with just dme and cooled it down than because my OG was only like 1.010 I added honey to it to raise it up to 1.025. Crap maybe I should just boil it again and put it back outside ?

 

[manoaction]

I'm going to play this game too. Who knows if this is going to work or not since I'm not taking advantage of a lot of the great advice in the thread.

It's supposed to freeze tonight so I figured the rest of my raspberries were goners for sure. I snipped off the four or five that were closest to ripe and then tossed them into some canned wort I had lying around. Stirplate on and.... we'll see what happens in a week or two.

 

[tom_gamer]

I'm going to play this game too. Who knows if this is going to work or not since I'm not taking advantage of a lot of the great advice in the thread.

It's supposed to freeze tonight so I figured the rest of my raspberries were goners for sure. I snipped off the four or five that were closest to ripe and then tossed them into some canned wort I had lying around. Stirplate on and.... we'll see what happens in a week or two.

Can't wait hear what happens

 

[jtakacs]

as an update, i've made three beers with my wild yeast - the last one was a sour saison - broke it out for my poker buddies last month who drink beer and all said "fantastic beer, what's in it? (they know better)" and another said "best beer you've made" - i did a control with a saison yeast against the same recipe - all liked the wild more than the control... i have my wild stored and it is fantastic. i'm going to brew a pale ale with it next to see how it does. it attenuates very dry (92% on my saison, mashed low so keep that in mind), has brett in it for sure (nothing crazy though - likely c or b) but i'm excited about the long term prospects of this yeast.

next step, steal a culture from a bottle and step it up to see how that performs...

best thread on the internet right here imo...

 

[manoaction]

as an update, i've made three beers with my wild yeast - the last one was a sour saison - broke it out for my poker buddies last month who drink beer and all said "fantastic beer, what's in it? (they know better)" and another said "best beer you've made" - i did a control with a saison yeast against the same recipe - all liked the wild more than the control... i have my wild stored and it is fantastic. i'm going to brew a pale ale with it next to see how it does. it attenuates very dry (92% on my saison, mashed low so keep that in mind), has brett in it for sure (nothing crazy though - likely c or b) but i'm excited about the long term prospects of this yeast.

Your stories are giving me new home about this business.....

After three days with the unripened raspberries in my wort on a stirplate, I had absolutely nothing happening. A prudent soul would wait until at least a week, but I'm a wildly impatient soul.

I tossed four juniper berries from my Rocky Mountain Juniper tree in the back yard into the flask. These berries were covered with the white film that I'm assuming is yeast. I also tossed in a dash of acid blend and yeast energizer. That's right folks, I said a dash. We're way scientific here at ManOAction Brewing....

 

[Aschecte]

No joke I have a pellicle 3 days in !!! I didn't even know that was possible but its got the atypical Brett bubbles and skin.

 

[dinnerstick]

These berries were covered with the white film that I'm assuming is yeast.

generally a wax "bloom" like on a ripe plum

 

[manoaction]

Well, after only 24 hours, the stir plate wort has turned cloudy and there is a ring of bubbles around the outside that look like carbonation is being knocked out of it. It smells piny/citrus sweet and definitely different than before, but that might be the acid blend adding in or maybe just juice from the juniper berries dissolving into the mixture.

At any rate, I'm taking it all as a positive sign.

 

[Radegast]

I rubberbanded coffee filters over the tops of my various yeast traps. Will a coffee filter let enough air through, or should I switch to loosely fitted aluminum foil lids? I see sediment in them, but I'm not sure whether that's yeast or some dme falling out of suspension...but the dme was thoroughly boiled and dissolved. So I'm hopeful it's yeast!

I may have made my wort too hoppy, though, because it's hard to smell anything else. I wanted to make sure I only captured sacch yeast. Will the yeast aroma come out when I decant and wash the slurry, or will some hops stick to the yeast slurry?

 

[Aschecte]

Ok after about 1.5 weeks of capturing some local bugs I have a fairly thick layer on the bottom of my mason jar pretty comprable to washing yeast. The smell is not at all unpleasant it almost smells like plain yogurt very lactic and somewhat sweet smelling initially somewhat honey like though there was only Dme and water. What I found interesting was that there were no bubbles like in a regular fermentation, does this mean I didn't catch any yeast that all i got was bacteria ? should I put it back outside ?

 

[manoaction]

As long as you have something, I'd consider running a teaspoon of the sediment through another starter. It should behave similar to a normal starter as in it should turn cloudy and then start to settle within three or four days. If you behavior takes weeks or if it smells wretched on the second starter, then I would suspect you don't have what your looking for.

 

[dinnerstick]

Ok after about 1.5 weeks of capturing some local bugs I have a fairly thick layer on the bottom of my mason jar pretty comprable to washing yeast. The smell is not at all unpleasant it almost smells like plain yogurt very lactic and somewhat sweet smelling initially somewhat honey like though there was only Dme and water. What I found interesting was that there were no bubbles like in a regular fermentation, does this mean I didn't catch any yeast that all i got was bacteria ? should I put it back outside ?

i have exactly the same thing. mine never bubbled or got foamy, then started to smell cheezy, now after 3 weeks i have convinced myself it smells sour/spicy. gf thinks it smells like cold vomit. i keep flipping between, "i've done something really disgusting here" and "total breakthrough!". i'm going to make a very small starter and add a little bit. all suggestions will be considered! i will also streak some out on plates and have a good hard stare at them

 

[Pith]

I can't wait to start doing this again. I just moved out of home, and now I have to go and get some DME...

 

[manoaction]

After stepping it up in a second starter, my homegrown guys are going to town in a one gallon test batch brewed with my backyard Chinook hops. The scent on the yeast starter was lemony/pineapple. We'll see how this goes...

 

[bluedubbed]

This thread is awesome. I have an experiment on going and will post photos soon, but I had a question.
I have a few strains of wild yeast that metabolize bromocresol green - so they are white/opaque when grown on BCG, yet they are sensitive to cyclohexamide at 10-20 mg/L.
From what I've read, Brett should be resistant to cyclohexamide. Any ideas to what these yeast might be. They are clearly budding yeast.
Thanks.

Doing some more searching, it seems possible that they might be Candida? That would suck as all my isolates have the same phenotype. One more edit. I don't think many Candida can tolerate cycloheximide.

Another update. I actually got one clone after 3 days at 30 degrees C that grew on cyclohexamide (last picture). It's looks no different than (colony morphology or cells) the cyc negative yeast.
I grew small cultures (10 mL in DME with a small bit of yeast extract) and neither of the cultures have much flavor at all? Do I need larger/longer grows? Yes, I might need to grow the yeast on cycloheximide for 7-10 days.

Ok, here are some photos of two wild yeast clones isolated from different sources.
What do you guys think? I think they might be Brett.


Clone 1

Clone 1

cyclohexamide resistant Clone 2

 

[dinnerstick]

can you send samples to a yeast lab for genotyping? i am very familiar with plant genotyping techniques and molecular biology in general, it's relatively simple to amplify a bit of ribosomal RNA genes or microsatellite DNA and sequence it, so i would imagine that a well equipped lab that already knows which bits to sequence could knock them out easily and give you a genus?? but i know nothing about yeast genotyping. if you are buying in bulk the total cost of reagents+materials to sequence a gene from one colony on a plate is probably around 20 dollars with the economy of scale (and if you happen to own a dye-terminator capillary sequencer!) and can be done from the amount of cells on the end of a toothpick stuck into the colony.
my point is it might not cost that much if there is a willing lab locally

 

[Aschecte]

That really brings up a great point.... Is there a lab that anyone knows of to perform this identification. As well to do this service for under $1,000's of dollars. I would love to identify what I have caught as I will be slanting and isolating colonies.

 

[jaapie]

That really brings up a great point.... Is there a lab that anyone knows of to perform this identification. As well to do this service for under $1,000's of dollars. I would love to identify what I have caught as I will be slanting and isolating colonies.

Siebel does it for 200 dollar or so. All they do is just a simple PCR of a specific part of the genome. I do not have the info here, but will post it next week. I tried the ITS parts myself as well, but those are hard to sequence because of the repeats. They use a different sequence.

I made a protocol where you can just use some yeast and PCR on them without doing DNA isolations. Yeast is a pain to lyse, but it worked. Then sequencing of the PCRed DNA is easy. A simple blast will give you your results.

 

[Aschecte]

Siebel does it for 200 dollar or so. All they do is just a simple PCR of a specific part of the genome. I do not have the info here, but will post it next week. I tried the ITS parts myself as well, but those are hard to sequence because of the repeats. They use a different sequence.

I made a protocol where you can just use some yeast and PCR on them without doing DNA isolations. Yeast is a pain to lyse, but it worked. Then sequencing of the PCRed DNA is easy. A simple blast will give you your results.

That would be great if you post that info it would be much appreciated.