Hand Of God

[dijital]

just havin a whirl with the hand of god method of brewing,has anybody tried this?just wonderin what kind of results can be got eg quality taste etc and is there any major pros or cons to this method of brewing???

 

[manticle]

Explanation of HOG brewing or a link would be good.

 

[felten]

Thats where maradona makes your beer for you right.

 

[[email protected]]

Thats where maradona makes your beer for you right.

Awesome, can't complain too much about free cocaine laced beer! But he can keep the transvestites.

 

[dijital]

LOL nearly m8 he could probably use the money right now.H.O.G brewing is using the natural yeasts in the air to contaminate the beer as opposed to using packeted yeast.H.O.G originates years back when beer was first discovered and this was the only technique available to brewers at the time,or so im led to believe

 

[pimpsqueak]

I thought that's what Lambics were... :blink:

 

[manticle]

LOL nearly m8 he could probably use the money right now.H.O.G brewing is using the natural yeasts in the air to contaminate the beer as opposed to using packeted yeast.H.O.G originates years back when beer was first discovered and this was the only technique available to brewers at the time,or so im led to believe

Makes more sense. Wild fermentation.

Major cons are that you obviously have unpredictable results. It's also been suggested in various texts that successful commercial breweries that use HOG have in fact hundreds of years of micro-organism growth within their brewry and are able to get consistent results. Whether you can get the same is debatable.

However half the fun of such a thing is throwing a bit of caution to the wind to see what happens.

Check out the babblebelt forum - there's HBers there who've attempted what you're suggesting.

Have you experince drinking any commercial types like lambics or breton ciders?

 

[unrealeous]

oh you mean lambics..

I'd prepare yourself for some disappointment. A few places like Belgium are lucky enough to have natural airborne yeasts that produce beer that actually taste good. But I'd bet that most other places such as in our fine brown land girt by sea, you'll end ups with rubbish.

Still, worth an experiment.

 

[[email protected]]

A few years a go I caught some wild yeast on an agar dish and turned it into a 2l starter. That's as far as I was willing to go with it, it tasted aweful. Have a read about Lambic beers though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambic

They are blessed with naturally occuring pallatable yeasts which makes the process good. But I wouldn't attempt it unless I was in the lambic valley.

Edit: Damn last of the 4 near identical posts!

 

[dijital]

thanks for the info ill check it out as for this batch ill let you know thanks again

 

[unrealeous]

On the bright side, the money you save on not buying yeast will help offset the cost of wort... That's sure to sooth some of the pain when you are pouring the batch down the sink h34r:

 

[[email protected]]

If you can get hold of some agar, do it this way. There is a lot of shite around in the air and i'd consider it a bit of a safety concern to try it uncontrolled in Australia.

The way I attempted to do it was to expose the plate and then allow it to incubate. There was a couple of yeast colonies, but there was also fungi, bacteria and golden steph. So I removed one of the colonies and put in a mixture of DME I built this up to 2 litres.

Then I dumped the lot after my first taste deciding that the whole experiment was a complete and utter waste of time.

 

[DUANNE]

i had a five litre cube of arrogant ******* wort leak and let air in 6 or so months ago and start slowly fermenting on its own. i have left it to its own devices and it seems to be resonable so far. so good results may be possible, but how many batches of bad v good would it work out to. ill know if mine is any good or not in another 12 months or so. im not sure if id risk the work of a full 20l batch to try it again though.

 

[[email protected]]

I wrote some emails to James Spencer from basic brewing radio about my experiment with wild yeast. I went back and found what I'd written. Here's my conclusions.

"The wild yeast started, the starter bottle swelled up there were signs of fermentation in the bottle. I opened it to take a smell, very interesting fruity aroma, similar to that of the Safale wheat yeast. But the bottle didn't swell back up after that. Fermentation had finished. I gave it a little taste, it was quite interesting and very fruity, but still sickly sweet. Obviously the alcohol tolerence of the yeast was very low and it couldn't ferment any more. I've repitched it to a larger starter and this time measured its initial gravity so if it starts back up atleast I can see what its actual alcohol tolerence is. However I doubt the yeast will be good for anything but ultra light beer. "

So my memory was wrong, it did taste ok, but it had very low alcohol tolerence, and useless for brewing.

 

[Nick JD]

God's a shit brewer. The folk at Wyeast ain't.

 

[kirem]

another twist is to let the indigenous yeasts start the fermentation then add a commercial strain to finish it.

 

[felten]

I have pitched some of my sourdough starter into a few L of left over beer before, it came out with quite a bit of lactic sourness and was drinkable but was very 1 dimensional, like a thin and less flavourful version of the original beer.

 

[Brewer_010]

Still, worth an experiment.

Worth someone ELSE experimenting

:icon_vomit:

Splitting a wyeast pack half a dozen times costs basically $2 a brew, far less than some $20-$30 in wort/hops. I'm all for experimenting but hey, natural floaty stuff in the air is more likely than not going to end up with some horrid infection that will be undrinkable...

I await the report on the results with interest