Over the past few months, I have been following a Homebrewtalk.com thread titled Can I culture yeast from Juniper Berries? COLObrewer, the thread’s originator, not only succeeded in culturing yeast from juniper berries, but was also able to use said yeast to ferment a beer with a 1.116 starting gravity down to 1.010, or just shy of 14% ABV. His success had me searching my property, all .19 acres of it, looking for yeast to culture. As luck would have it, a few weeks ago, I noticed some plums on a tree in my front yard had a powdery white coating; similar to COLObrewer’s juniper berries. I was sure I was staring at either wild yeast or car exhaust. The only way to be sure was to put into practice the time-honored adage, “When life gives you plums, ferment them.”
Saturday, I picked up a couple pounds of DME from the homebrew shop and began my quest to culture yeast/exhaust from plums. I made up a 1 quart starter of 1.040 wort in a spare growler and went outside to gather some plums. Unfortunately, with the recent heat, my tree had already dropped all its fruit. I managed to scavenge about a dozen intact windfalls, all but two (pic, far right) already starting to brown. Oh well, in you go.
After about 48 I had signs of fermentation. There was a foamy krausen occupying space between the floating fruit. There was also a yeasty aroma and a good deal of sediment in the bottom of the growler. Liftoff.
Tuesday I made a new 1/2 gallon starter, lightly hopped with some left-over Columbus. My plan was to decant the first starter and pitch the settled yeast into the new one. When I opened the growler, I was met with a strong yeast aroma. A strong Belgian-esque yeast aroma; quite similar to the smell my Wit had while fermenting. Excited, I charged my wife, growler in hand, yelling for her to smell the jar. I was met with a fist.
Back on my feet, I took a hydro sample while decanting the growler. The gravity was still about 1.040, but there was a ton of yeast in suspension. The picture below shows the new starter, directly after the yeast was pitched. Ooh, so cloudy.
Within a couple hours, the new starter had developed some splotches on the surface. Had this been several days in, I would have been firing off shoddy picture-laden “Is My Beer Infected?” posts to all the homebrew forums. But at sub-three hours, I don’t think anything but the yeast had time to take hold. Here is the starter at 24 hours; you can see the pile of yeast building in the bottom of the container.
Since I don’t own a stir plate, I have been giving the starter a good shake a few times every day. I am currently fermenting around 75 (F), but this will probably rise over the next few days as the outside temperature starts to climb again. I plan to let the starter go until I see a noticeable change in gravity, or get some horrible infection. If the yeast succeeds in fermenting the starter, I’ll give it a real beer to chew on. Assuming this all works out, anyone interested in a beer swap (Watch it. The OLCC could be reading – Legal Advisor) where we all brew the same recipe and ferment with locally cultivated yeasts? Could be fun.
Cheers!
Kevin
This is brilliant. I hope you keep us up to date on it. Will Wyeast or someone do a DNA analysis for you? It would be interesting to know exactly what you’ve got hold of there.
And congratulations on a year of blogging!
Bill,
Thanks. I pulled a hydro sample last night and the starter was down to 1.014, so yeasties are definitely at work. The sample was very lemony tasting. I don’t think it is a lacto infection; I’ve sour mashed before and this is something completely different. Although part of the flavor could be the Columbus hops I boiled for 10 minutes. Some people describe them as lemony when used as flavor/aroma additions.
In any case, 1.014 was good enough for me, so I crashed the starter in the fridge last night. When I looked at it this evening, the krausen had fallen and there was one dime sized white floating bit. Maybe some other type of infection? I am going to decant tomorrow and save the yeast into a few new starts.
I am getting ready to brew a Smoked American Wheat Ale and am now thinking about scaling it back to two gallons and using this yeast. This will keep it out of my main fermenter in case there is an infection and should make a good beer if the yeast in fact lemony.
The recipe will probably be:
2 lbs White Wheat
1 lbs Rauchmalt
1 lbs 2-Row
.35 oz Tettnanger @ 60
That should come out to a 5% brew with ~15 IBU.
As for analysis, I know Wyeast does it, but I’m sure there is a price attached. I want to be sure I have something clean before I think about analysis. On the suggestion of a Homebrewtalk user, I am looking into purchasing some antibacterial agar plates. I can inoculate them with the yeast culture and kill of any bacterial infection. This is all a little far thinking though; step one: does it make good beer?
Cheers!
Kevin
[...] night to brew with the wild yeast I captured from my yard a few weeks ago. As I mentioned in my Previous Post, the plan was to brew a 2 gallon batch of smoked wheat ale. After a quick question to Matt at [...]
[...] beer, fermented with a wild yeast captured from my yard, was bottled in late September. At bottling time, the beer had a slight lemony taste; similar to [...]