some warning – this was my first time collecting wild yeast and fermenting using it, there is a lot more to wild yeasts than meets the eye and more than I wrote in this blog, I am aware of it – but this is more of a story than anything. If you decide to go down the adventure road of wild yeast, just be careful and use common sense – research everything, this is by no means some indefinite write-up, also – stay away from assholes, they are everywhere, enjoy the hobby and don’t let them bog you down!
by the way: if you are interested in purchasing the Wild Yeast that was used to make this beer – Contact me.
When the Norwegian Farmhouse Ale was brewed – I did a second water running on the grain (lower ABV 3%) to test out a wild yeast that was collected in Summer of 2018 off Raspberries.
Now to those that don’t know a wild yeast is not a pure strain of yeast, it is in fact a culture – which is a mix of yeast, maybe even more than one yeast and other bacteria. When I first captured the yeast after the initial fermentation there was Brettanomyces in the krausen- this gives you the sour beer, in the top of the krausen you can see a spider web like infection – this is a tell tale sign.
I didn’t want a sour beer, so I had to clean it up, I collected the yeast below the krausen and did another yeast starter – you can google about this process to learn more…
see video below of what I did:
After another fermentation and confirmation of a clean yeast, I stored in the fridge until I had an opportunity to use it later, which was on this brew. Wild yeast in my opinion are a lot tougher, they have to survive winter in some harsh conditions, nature maintains it without any human involvement or lab process, in piles under leaves, under snow, sometimes freezing for months. I think it gives to the complexity and variability of the beer and probably why there is a resurgence in the Wild Ales.
So anyways, this yeast was added to the wort from the second runnings, pics below, as you can see the Brettanomyces is gone!!!
Yes, I collected all of that krausen into a sterilized jar and into the fridge it went for another brew. As you can see it was very clean and I didn’t see any weird colors or blocks of anything odd.
So now I have my very own unique wild culture of yeast collected from my land 🙂 Hooray!
another warning when bottling – let the ABV settle for a while to make sure it is stable and use less than the idea amount of priming sugar your first time as with a non-wild yeast, so you don’t end up with exploding bottles, as example I used 3 ounces of sugar for this 5 gallons batch, and everything ended up fine for me and nice…
I will brew some other beers in the future and blog more later…
I will update once the beer is ready to drink with more pics and a more detailed taste report!
links:
If you are into Sour beers: