Wild Yeast Capture - questions

I'm at about the same stage as you with my wild yeast capture, had 3 but tossed 2 because I really need to master what I'm doing with 1 before I try multiples. I was planning on brewing a 5 gal batch and seeing what happens, however, I was going to pour off some of the yeast starter and save to build up later (if good) or toss (if bad). I may end up going to agar plate route, but one must crawl before he builds a lab, IMO.

And to give some insight, I would say your smell and flavor descriptors I think you got a keeper. Can you check pH? Let us know how it goes!

 

If you can get @jbakajust1 to join the thread, he has lots of wild yeast experience. I believe he's referred to as the Wild Brewer in Oregon brew-circles . . . just a matter of time until they name a strain after him .

 

Thanks @PortLargo I have done this a few times now. Best one's I've gotten were from blackberries and peaches. The resulting beer actually had some of that character too. Once you step up and get a good healthy yeast cake I would say go for it. You can try to isolate if you want to, I just went with it on mine. The first one I did with the blackberry and peach took BOS 2.5 years later. Spicy and banana sounds like it would work well with a Hefe or a Saison wort. Saison would also go well with the potential for lactic acid bacteria. If it were me, I would brew a 5 gallon batch, see what kind of attenuation it yields, and early flavors, then roll from there. If it didn't finish dry enough, leave it for another 9 months and see where it goes. If it dried out and tasted good, do another batch to age for 9 months to a year.

 

So, the wild yeast was 'obtained' by adding the fruit which had the wild yeast on it?

Cheers!

 

I would love to learn how to brew great sours and wild ales, but the time commitment is just insane to me. Seems like a tough and quite long learning curve.

 

I used the fruits to make starters from as opposed to airborne collection.

 

It cam seem daunting, but good sanitation and brewing practices, keeping airlocks full, using commercial dregs or many of the new blends produces some great beers.

 

I've done the same thing, using fruit or flowers to harvest wild yeast. I've got some really great wild yeast(s) from wild blackberries and honey suckle before! I've never plated and isolated them to see if it's a single strain from each though and I tend to use them in other beverages besides beer.

 

In the quest to produce a legit local gueuze I've brewed 'spontaneously fermented' wild ales/'lambics' the last 3 years now with yeast captured by setting out wort overnight to cool underneath a crab-apple tree in my yard, and then stepping them up. Rule of thumb is 'if it smells good, use it'; if it smells like something you would not want to drink, toss it. I've had a few rotten corn starters, but the ones I use tend to smell like sour apples. I like to step up the starter from 300ml to 2L over several sequential steps, and after the first couple steps I will pour the wort through a mesh strainer to pull out any gunk and debris that got into it during the time it was sitting outside.

Time frame seems to be around 1.5 years for things to start souring, and the yeast I capture has crazy high attentuation rates, dropping 5 gallons of 1.070-1.080 wort to 1.002 within a week, so I tend to need to add maltrodextrine or dextrose after it's been sitting 6+ months to give the wild bugs something to feed on to produce some sourness. I keep the ibu's low on these brews to encourage some lactic acid production, but given the time delay before souring, pedio is most likely the dominant force there. I have not tried to isolate things, but I am positive there is a real assertive sacch strain in the air here, along with some brett c. and pedio. Might send a yeast culture out to a lab for analysis just to sate my curiosity.

 

I wouldn't worry about pulling from the krausen. Try yeast rinsing to get the crud from the bottom and all the healthiest yeast and bacteria. Once rinsed crash it for a week in the fridge to drop the cells then decant and do a fresh starter.

I have used the blackberry and peach to ferment a Belgian Blonde wort that was ready in only 3 weeks. It wasn't really sour, but nice and fruity, light phenols, dry. I have also aged with it and gotten dry, fruity, funky, spicy, sour.

Flavors will change over time, and if you cellar the bottles will continue to do so.

 

I don't have anything useful to add, by I'm curious about why you added the hop pellet. To discourage lactobacillus or something?

 

I love this thread. I'm going to try my hand at getting some wild yeast from under a friends lemon tree this weekend.

 

I did this once. Just took some last runnings, boiled it and set it out until it cooled. I did streak on agar. I looked at the cultures through the microscope. Most of them were in the 1-2 uM range. Beer yeast is supposed to be a bit bigger, like 5uM. I had 2 (of 10) colonies that were larger. Did two 2.5 gallon batches. One was ok, interesting kind of like bread. The other was not good if I remember.

Oh, and the one large culture had bacteria in it, so I made plates with Kanomycin or Chloroamphenicol or something to inhibit the bacteria and streaked it out again. That gave me the pure colony.

Make glycerol stocks and into the -80C They went. I tried to brew again with that strain but it was not very good.

 

So I picked the fruits, ripe ones, and rinsed them free for debris and any bugs (like ants). Added them to a pint of 1.020 OG starter wort and fit with an airlock. Let it go for a week, then added a quart of 1.040 OG wort to the existing starter batch and let that go another week. I would then decant the liquid into a new container, let it drop clear in the fridge, and then decant the liquid. Add the yeast cake to a new starter and get it ready to go for a full batch.

You can also add just a couple fruits to 50ml of wort and build up from there. Takes longer, but if you have a bad pitch you won't waste as much as you would with the bigger starter.

 

The one time I made a wild ale I boiled a pound-ish of DME and an .5 oz-ish of old hops and ended up with .75gal-ish and just set it outside under cheese cloth overnight on my porch in Davis, CA to cool. I didn't measure OG. I also didn't realize hops' antimicrobial nature was a bad thing. It got sour though, and I primed and bottled it when the gravity stabilized after 1-2 months-ish.

The bottles tasted sorta like funky lemonade. I didn't care for it but had the thought that if you liked sours, you might have liked it. It didn't have any really strange rotten flavors or corn.

I was 19 and had never tried a sour beer, I really didn't care and just used leftover ingredients. I sorta wish I took more note of what I was doing because now I'm interested in the style and maybe I'd like it now.