Wild Beer From Culturing Yeast Off Malt?

[katzke]

Just got a crazy idea. Anyone ever try a wild beer by making a starter out of malt? I keep reading that people think the beginning of beer was some brave soul that drank the water running off a bag of old grain. I also read that malt dust is full of live stuff. It would not take much to get a starter going like sourdough. The cost would only be some dry malt extract and a few hop pellets to add the benefits of the hops in keeping bad bugs out. I guess a starter could also have a touch of vodka in it to even go further in providing a hostile environment to the bad and encourage the good yeast.


What do you think?

 

[Bizier]

Take one for the team Katzke.

I have been thinking similar things. When I am done with my current load, I'm getting a copy of both "wild brews" and "farmhouse ales".

I think that it is good idea, and you might even be able to acid wash if one is particularly good, and try to separate the wild yests from the other (potentially nasty) bugs.

 

[PostModern]

You would want malted grain, not malt extract. And it's loaded with lactobacillus, so I hope you like sour beer.

 

[raven19]

In a thread a while back someone left their fermenter open overnight to let the wild yeast in. ended up ok as I recall from the thread. (It may have been Bindi - but can't be sure)

Just did a searach on wild yeast, there are a few threads like this one...

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...p?showtopic=236

Give it a go, if its just a starter you have not got much to lose.

 

[katzke]

You would want malted grain, not malt extract. And it's loaded with lactobacillus, so I hope you like sour beer.

Yes it would take a bit of malted barley also. The dry malt was for the starter. Need some sugar from someplace besides un-mashed barley.

 

[PostModern]

Oh. I didn't expand what you meant well enough from your OP. Why not make an unboiled beer from a mash then? Like ales of yore.

 

[rich_lamb]

Cool idea - akin to making wine right; use the yeast native to the fermentables?
But you need not go to too much trouble to exclude "bad" bugs as they will be there in vast numbers regardless of what you try, and they will provide a lot of the character I expect.

Good... Bad... they're just labels man.

 

[sam]

We made a sourdough starter from just wheat and rye flour, and that's got a fair whack of bugs in it. I'm sure whatever it touches, it will turn sour. The breads great, but I haven't let it near a beer yet...

 

[katzke]

PostModern, Bitter & Twisted, and sam,

One reason why I was thinking of the starter with the hops and vodka was to eliminate some of the undesirable flavors. Not just going for a sour beer fermented with whatever drops in but more of a controlled brew. Still wild yeast and other critters but selected for life in beer. Plus if the wort was just left to go wild the outcome would be unpredictable. With the starter at least one would know if it smelled and tasted worthy of using. Plus the starter could be split to save some incase the beer was award winning.

Bizier,

I did not even consider the idea of acid washing the culture. That would help reduce the bad flavor potential even more. Not sure how the wild yeast would put up with the washing but only one way to tell.

 

[caleb]

You know I was having similar thoughts just this morning.
I sometimes use a "mini-fermenter" with sugar and yeast to pump CO2 into my aquarium (makes the plants grow!). Anyway, I last did it MONTHS & MONTHS ago, and have had this sugar brew aging all this time. Today, I dared take a sip, and actually it was not bad - tasted like sherry and VERY alcoholic. Not a bad result considering I didn't sterilize anything and just added some yeast cake to about 1L water and 1/2 or 1 cup raw sugar, and let it rip.

So I was thinking, why not do some mini-ferments with some wild experiments - the main one being some sort of lambic/spontaneous fermentation idea.

Why not?

On the last thread linked above, they mention it "only works in a small area in Belgium"... well bollocks. Once upon a time ALL fermentation was "spontaneous". Beer was invented in Iraq or Iran - via spontaneous fermentation. At one time ALL yeasts were "wild"... EVERY brewer relied on some magic method which was really just a way to "infect" the brew - a special stick for stirring, an old wooden barrel, froth from the top of the last brew, etc. The first beers were made from bread, (probably stale bread) which was crushed and mixed with water. Voila - it starts to ferment. The bread itself was no doubt a "sour dough" - i.e. the "lambic" of the bread world. I'll say again - ALL YEASTS were once wild! NOT just those in some magic Belgian valley.

So, having written this rant, I feel almost obliged to try something in a "mini-fermenter" aka old chianti bottle...
It's only 1L so it fails miserably it is no great loss. (When I discover that only the "magic valley" has GOOD tasting wild yeasts, while Australia has some foul miscreants.)

 

[dr K]

On the last thread linked above, they mention it "only works in a small area in Belgium"... well bollocks. Once upon a time ALL fermentation was "spontaneous". Beer was invented in Iraq or Iran - via spontaneous fermentation. At one time ALL yeasts were "wild"... EVERY brewer relied on some magic method which was really just a way to "infect" the brew - a special stick for stirring, an old wooden barrel, froth from the top of the last brew, etc. The first beers were made from bread, (probably stale bread) which was crushed and mixed with water. Voila - it starts to ferment. The bread itself was no doubt a "sour dough" - i.e. the "lambic" of the bread world. I'll say again - ALL YEASTS were once wild! NOT just those in some magic Belgian valley.

Senne but senseless.
It may be a rant but the disinformation is so huge it does not warrant a reply any longer than this...







K

 

[caleb]

Senne but senseless.
It may be a rant but the disinformation is so huge it does not warrant a reply any longer than this...

Well actually if I'm wrong about something here I'd prefer you to tell me. Do you know something about the origins of yeast I don't?

 

[PostModern]

It took centuries for brewers to stabilise and select the yeast strains we now know and love. I doubt the ooze from Persian bags of spontaneously fermented grain tasted good at all. I further contend that the best brewers back then were the ones with the most friendly blend of wild organisms and/or the right conditions.

 

[caleb]

It took centuries for brewers to stabilise and select the yeast strains we now know and love. I doubt the ooze from Persian bags of spontaneously fermented grain tasted good at all. I further contend that the best brewers back then were the ones with the most friendly blend of wild organisms and/or the right conditions.

Well no doubt that is the case. My point is that all these yeasts did once come from somewhere... of course they have gone through centuries of selection but they still have "wild" ancestors if you go back far enough.
Actually I believe that grapes (and maybe other fruit) are a good source of decent wild yeasts, and in fact our favorite S. Cervesia actually ends up the dominant strain in most spontaneously fermented wines. Perhaps our "good" yeasts were actually borrowed from wine makers. Or perhaps adding a small amount of grapes to a batch was found to yield good results. This "good" result was in turn kept going by reusing cake or krausen scraped from the past brew, or via un-sterilized wooden items, etc.

 

[Pat Casey]

1. Archeological evidence suggests beer was discovered/invented independently several times. A couple of years ago an enterprising archeologist tested pottery shards from Northern Europe and found that many had traces of calcium oxalate. There is only one thing that leaves deposits of calcium oxalte: beer. The age of the shards throws out the conventional chronology of brewing originating in the Middle East and then being taken to Northern Europe.

2. The Senne Valley is full of orchards. Environmental yeasts like hanging around fruit. It's easy to forget what an evolutionary success story yeast are. In the presence of oxygen they can obtain energy from glucose by oxidising or burning it, and in the absence of oxygen they can still obtain energy from glucose by fermenting it, albeit less efficiently. Plus the waste product from fermentation, alcohol, is toxic to yeasts' competitors. Given the long history of brewing in the Senne Valley it would probably be pretty hard to pick up anything but lambic yeasts.

3. The best time to catch environmental yeasts is early autumn when there is lots of ripe fruit around. I've done a few sour dough starters like this under the grapefruit tree at home. Tried it for beer but the birds and possibly some possums got there first, so I resorted to a cultured mix for a lambic.

Make up a starter at about SG of 1030 or so - 100g dried malt extract per litre of water. Put the starter in a wide bowl and cover securely with some coarse cheesecloth or gauze to keep out the insects. Under or near some fruit trees, put the covered bowl in a wire cage or similar secured to the ground to protect it from animals. Keep the gauze moist by spraying it lightly with water each day. You should get something going within a week.

It will be too hot to brew this Sunday so a good time to bottle the current lambic.

Pat
Absolute Homebrew
St Marys & Blue Mountains

 

[Swinging Beef]

I.m all for crazy, revolting tasting experiments, but you could always just buy some decent yeast with 'wild' yeast in it.
Even award winning Belgian brewers, now, that use wild yeasts, are kicking them along with a commercially isolated strain of a wild yeast.

 

[Bizier]

I.m all for crazy, revolting tasting experiments, but you could always just buy some decent yeast with 'wild' yeast in it.
Even award winning Belgian brewers, now, that use wild yeasts, are kicking them along with a commercially isolated strain of a wild yeast.

But this is homebrew.

I could buy all my hops, but maybe I want to grow them even if the flavour profile of my Goldings doesn't exactly match those of East Kent.

As this is referring to tiny experimental batches, I am sure it is not in the interests of controlled repeatable results, it is to satisfy the curiosity as to what truly random wild yeasts taste like. And to do it first hand is the best way IMO.

 

[muckanic]

To get back to the OP, it is relatively easy to knock-out bacteria but can be relatively hard to knock-out some wild yeast strains. Hops and alcohol won't necessarily help. Anaerobic conditions and acid-washing may help a bit more. Of course, you can always streak out a spontaneous fruit ferment and then pick and choose, but I guess that sort of violates the whole ethos a bit. Incidentally, any time I have deliberately tried to make vinegar from old wine, I have failed.

 

[Swinging Beef]

Incidentally, any time I have deliberately tried to make vinegar from old wine, I have failed.

What did you get?
Gold?

 

[MHB]

One of the best places to find wild yeast is in figs, strange as it may sound.

Figs are a sort of inside-out flower and are full of sugars, as they ripen they turn into mini incubators, they are also wide spread and easy to harvest so its one of the places bug hunters look.

Mind you there are literally millions of strains of yeast identified, of which a couple of hundred are good for brewing thank god for pure strains.
Odds are that what you are doing wont turn up a new type of yeast or one thats good, but someone has to get lucky bit like lotto.

MHB