New to wild brewing

[bstacy1974]

I've been wanting to capture some local yeast for a couple of years, so I thought I'd make it a family science project.
My youngest daughter loves to bake so any captured yeast will not only be for brewing experiments, but also for sourdough or other bread recipes.

Day 1
Made a small batch of extract broth with a few pellets of Cascade hops. After a short boil, I split the wort into 3 small mason jar. The jars and lids were then placed in a pressure cooker for 20 mins.
After cooling, my two youngest kids and I collected some flora growing around the house for each jar. A clover flower, high bush cranberries, and a couple of fireweed flowers.
The lids were loosely placed on the jars to allow gas to escape.


Day 3
Bubble formation on top and a noticeable turbidity to the wort. The smell was very fruity citrus.


Day 5
I think we have something. Maybe yeast. Each jar looks and smells the same. The greenish layer on the bottom is the hops and proteins from the extract, but there is a very faint layer of yeast that's settled on top of the trub. Plus some yeast is sticking to the sides of the jar.


Day 7
I placed the jars in my keezer to cold crash for the next week. I picked up some agar powder at the health food store and my petri dishes will be here next Wednesday.
We will plate a sample from each jar next Saturday.
More to come.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi bstacy1974, I am performing a similar experiment. I am less interested in brewing beer (though not uninterested) than in making mead and I have several jars with what I hope are wild yeasts from raw honey, from dried figs, from a plum and hopefully, this weekend I will start one from some gesho twigs and leaves (inchet and kitel). I have these in different solutions - the honey is a dilute must of honey and spring water (with some nutrient) while the figs are simply swimming in a solution of sugar and spring water.
While these samples (not yet starters) have been in solution since 7/21 I am not seeing any film of yeast forming but the gravities seem to be dropping (checking this with a refractometer) and when I agitate the jars I get a very large amount of released gas, so something is going on - though whether this is yeast or bacteria I am not certain.
My plan (better: my hope) is to be able to harvest enough yeast over the next few weeks to create a starter by racking off the liquid, washing the yeast, adding more must to each sample and propagating the colony until I have a large enough colony to use to ferment various mead recipes I want to make.
I also bake bread and was seriously considering using some of the "hooch" (the liquid that is normally discarded from sourdough colonies, but in this case the decanted liquor) to see what that might add to my breads...

 

[bstacy1974]

Just finished up my plates.



I thought that I'd be making malt extract agar, but after watching YouTube videos by Sui Generis Brewing, I went with potato dextrose agar.
100mls of agar was enough for 5 plates. My plates are 90mm x 18mm.
One plate will be a control to see if my lab technique has gotten worse over the years. (My career started in an environmental lab doing drinking water analysis.)
One plate each for our unknown yeast samples from various flora. Then one plate with Mangrove Jack's M44, just to see what pure yeast will look like.
If we get growth, I'll post more pics.

 

[bstacy1974]

BTW, as this is actually a science experiment with my two youngest kids, they helped all through this process today. From making the agar, to pouring plates. They tried to do a plate but kept digging into the agar. It's the M44 plate. I wanted them to get a feel for how lightly they needed to touch the media. I finished the rest of the plates.
They especially liked to flame the loop.

 

[Grod1]

good luck brother, i got to the same point as you but then put the project on the back burner. im going to start fresh this fall. but i still have the cultures i made in the first place. i posted pictures of the wild plates here.

 

[bstacy1974]

About 26 hours of incubation time. I'll let them go for another day before I start the next phase.

The fireweed plate looks the best.


The berry and clover plates look fairly awful.

Berries


Clover


I especially don't like the yellow color of the clover plate. Obviously, my technique needs some work. I think the areas of confluent growth on the berry and clover plates was due to some condensation that had dripped from the lids while the plates were cooling. I streaked through the water and made a mess of both plates.
The fireweed plate looks fantastic. Lots of individual colonies to choose from. There are a few isolated colonies on the berry plate as well. These two will move forward in this experiment. The clover sample is out.

 

[Grod1]

keep the plates upside down after they solidly and you wont get the condensation on the lid. what does the Mangrove Jack's M44 plate look like?

 

[bstacy1974]

keep the plates upside down after they solidly and you wont get the condensation on the lid. what does the Mangrove Jack's M44 plate look like?

At the time of the photos, the M44 had very little growth.


But when I checked last night, it looked much better. I'll snap a pic before dumping it. I need the plate for further testing. In my experience, M44 is a slow starter. I guess that translates to agar plates as well.

I popped all the plates in the fridge to slow down further growth. We plan on choosing some isolated colonies and streaking more plates tonight.

 

[Grod1]

Do you have link to anything you are following? Just kind winging it?
When you have a colony you like are you planing on just cutting out a section and inoculating one of those half pints with it?

 

[bstacy1974]

A little of both Grod1.
At one point in my career, I was a drinking water lab analyst. I did stuff like this all day. That was a few years ago however, so I've been watching YouTube videos and reading this forum to refresh my brain cells.
Sui Generis, YouTube channel, has a really good video on how to select colonies. He describes what to look for and what to avoid.
Additionally, this is not only a family science experiment, but also practice for me to develop lab experiments for a water quality class I teach.

 

[bstacy1974]

what does the Mangrove Jack's M44 plate look like?

Gord1
Here you go. This was after about 54 hours.

 

[bstacy1974]

It's been a busy week.
I made more plates Tuesday night and streaked them with the previously plated berry and fireweed samples.
The fireweed didn't produce individual colonies so I've excluded it from moving forward. But I'm not giving up it. I think it may be my technique messing up the plates. I'll keep one plate for future testing.
The high bush cranberry plates did fairly well. One plate had a little heavier growth but the other produced nice colonies.



This plate is moving on today. Two colonies will be selected for two small mason jar samples with a weak starter solution.
After a few days, I'll take these two jars and pour them in a 2L flask with a stronger starter solution.

 

[Miraculix]

It's been a busy week.
I made more plates Tuesday night and streaked them with the previously plated berry and fireweed samples.
The fireweed didn't produce individual colonies so I've excluded it from moving forward. But I'm not giving up it. I think it may be my technique messing up the plates. I'll keep one plate for future testing.
The high bush cranberry plates did fairly well. One plate had a little heavier growth but the other produced nice colonies.

[IMGi]http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a173/bstacy1974/20170805_093224.jpg[/IMG]

This plate is moving on today. Two colonies will be selected for two small mason jar samples with a weak starter solution.
After a few days, I'll take these two jars and pour them in a 2L flask with a stronger starter solution.

It is a true pleasure to follow the great documentation of your experiments!

 

[GeneDaniels1963]

I have been playing with this kind of thing too. I did a cider with blackberry yeast. And I have a jar going now to see how high abv the wild yeast will go.

I started out with pure apple juice and now just keep step feeding it sugar. It is currently sitting at 16% abv. Tastes like firewater crap, but that is not the point, I just want to see what my wild yeast will produce.

 

[bstacy1974]

It is a true pleasure to follow the great documentation of your experiments!

Thank you. I'll have more later today. Took some time off to spend with family last week. In that time, my flask arrived and I finished a homemade stir plate.
Today is also a brew day. Looking to turn around a Mirror Pond Pale Ale clone for a McGregor v. Mayweather fight party.

 

[bstacy1974]

Tastes like firewater crap, but that is not the point, I just want to see what my wild yeast will produce.

Me too! It's a discovery process with my kids more than anything else. But, if I get a tasty beer in the process, so be it.
Since I live in Alaska, my curiosity goes to temperature. Will this yeast ferment at lager temps. I'll do a one gallon batch at ale temps first, and if that works, I'll try a small lager recipe. Probably getting way ahead of myself, but that's how the scientific method works! Ask questions, do experiments, observe results!

 

[bstacy1974]

Not much to look at here, but we got the flask spinning.

 

[bstacy1974]

After about 36 hours, the starter is going strong.
I lifted the foil to take a whiff and what I smelled was not awful, but not very pleasant either. I couldn't place it for awhile. It has a more vegetal quality than fruity notes.
Then the wife opened a can of corn for dinner. This is the smell I'm getting from the starter. Very canned corn like. I don't like corn so I guess that's why I couldn't place the odor.
I don't know if this is good or bad. I'll try doing a little more research on it.

 

[Grod1]

"Dimethyl Sulfide (DMS) is a sulfur compound produced during fermentation of beer that has the aroma of cooked or creamed corn. ":

 

[bstacy1974]

So that's what DMS smells like. Been brewing for a few years. Never had that issue.
I'll give it another day or so to completely ferment, then refrigerate until the weekend.

 

[Grod1]

did you take gravity readings?

 

[bstacy1974]

did you take gravity readings?

Unfortunately no, for the OG at least. A refractometer is next on my shopping list. The starter was the typical 10:1 ratio water to DME in grams. It should have been around 1.030-1.040.
I'll get a FG when I think it's finished.

 

[bstacy1974]

Well, either my measurements were way off or 5 days was not enough to fully ferment the starter. The gravity is still 1.034.

 

[bstacy1974]

Secondary experiment making sourdough with this yeast started this morning. The weather is very rainy today, so it looks like some beer brewing is on for later today.
I can't very well work on the roof in the rain, can I. That's just unsafe.

 

[bstacy1974]

So I never got around to making beer with these cultures. I tried to make a starter a few times but could never get the gravity to drop significantly enough to try to make a beer.
However, we did add one of these attempts to some flour. With the jump start from the malt extract, we had a vigorous sourdough starter within a week.
Since then, we've made lots of bread and pancakes!

 

[RPh_Guy]

Very cool, thanks for the narrative! Would be nice to find a nice local wild yeast for fermentation though...

Sounds like the yeast you picked up just had a fairly low alcohol tolerance. If you still have colonies you could consider using it to make sweet cider if you could get at least 4-5% ABV out of it. I think plenty of people would want a yeast like that (and I don't think it would throw off any DMS-type aromas from a fruit juice).

 

[bstacy1974]

Very cool, thanks for the narrative! Would be nice to find a nice local wild yeast for fermentation though...

Sounds like the yeast you picked up just had a fairly low alcohol tolerance. If you still have colonies you could consider using it to make sweet cider if you could get at least 4-5% ABV out of it. I think plenty of people would want a yeast like that (and I don't think it would throw off any DMS-type aromas from a fruit juice).

RPh,
I ended up tossing the plated cultures. Life got busy toward the fall. I teach a community college class and between that, work and family, I didn't maintain the plates the way I should have.
However, the sourdough is essentially a product of one of these cultures. Over the past 4 months or so, I've maintained the starter weekly and used it two or three times per month for baking or cooking. At anytime, I could plate a sample of the sourdough to try to isolate something. The semester ended and I've gained a little time during my week.
Maybe I'll start this weekend!
I wonder if anyone has tried a wild yeast Graff or Apfelwein?

 

[apl_seed]

Your bread looks great! Thinking of a San Fransisco burger using your bread is making me salivate.

 

[Miraculix]

RPh,
I ended up tossing the plated cultures. Life got busy toward the fall. I teach a community college class and between that, work and family, I didn't maintain the plates the way I should have.
However, the sourdough is essentially a product of one of these cultures. Over the past 4 months or so, I've maintained the starter weekly and used it two or three times per month for baking or cooking. At anytime, I could plate a sample of the sourdough to try to isolate something. The semester ended and I've gained a little time during my week.
Maybe I'll start this weekend!
I wonder if anyone has tried a wild yeast Graff or Apfelwein?

A lot of cider and Apfelwein is made wild with the yeast naturally sitting on top of the appleskin. Basically you only need to press the apples and wait.

I am a fan of everything wild, but have not had a wild cider I liked unfortunately...