Has anyone tried brewing beer open ?, and let whatever wild yeasts
indigenous to the area take over ?
Or is this a fool’s errand ?
There’s a multi award winning brewery near me that does that…DeGarde. the brewer told me that they dump over a third of their beer due to the fact it turns into vinegar. So yeah, you can do it, but be prepared for whatever happens. I’ve known homebrewers who have done it, also, with similar results. My one attempt resulted in an undrinkable mess and I’ve never tried again.
I wrangled some yeast and pitched it with British V and it came out great. It was like a summer shandy.
I have not brewed since 2016, but I have been delving into sourdough lately. Every sourdough culture is different due to native microflora. What I learned after several attempts to create a healthy sourdough starter from scratch is that using whole organic wheat flour works a lot better than unbleached bread flour, which makes sense seeing that the bran contains most of the wild microflora. The fact that the grain is organically grown means that no fungicides were use on it, increasing the amount of sporulated yeast in the milled flour. The next important thing that I learned is that a starter that is started with pineapple juice works better at creating a starter that contains a higher ratio of wild yeast to undesirable bacteria than one that is started with water. The reason being that pineapple juice has a pH of 3.5. When prepared as a 50% weight by volume solution (50grams of whole wheat flour to 100 grams of pineapple juice), the starter has a pH in the range of 4.3, which is below the pH at which pathogens and other bad bacteria can replicate. The starter is stepped with 25 grams of whole wheat flour on the 3rd day and another 25 grams on the 4th day before being stepped equal amounts starter, wheat, and water. Most of the yeast in a sourdough culture comes from the flour, that is, unless one lives a high native yeast area such as grain fields, vineyards, and orchards. A large percentage of the bacteria comes the local environment, which is why sourdough cultures tend to be different from culture to culture.
That being said, applying what I have learned to brewing. I would acidify the wort down to around to between ph 4.0 and 4.5 and allow it to sit uncovered for between 12 and 24 hours (start it hot like the Belgians do). From there, I would pitch a sufficient quantity of quality dry yeast for the batch at hand (dry yeast strains are grown below the Crabtree threshold under aerobic conditions, so they should be good to go in low oxygen wort). Bacteria strains multiply three times as fast as yeast strains, so giving the native yeast and bacteria a head start should be balanced out by a healthy pitch of a known yeast. If a brewer truly wants to live on the wild side, he/she should attempt to create a sourdough starter using ground malted wheat or malted rye using the process outlined above and transition the sourdough culture to a liquid culture after it starts by using the sourdough starter to inoculate acidified starter media. I used to start cultures off of using autoclaved (pressure cooked) pH 4.0 adjusted 5% weight by volume (w/v) wort (1.020 wort).
The cool thing about attempting to use a sourdough culture to start a beer starter is that the yeast in milled flour is sporulated, which is way for yeast strains to survive hard times. Most brewing strains unable to sporulate due to not being able to undergo meiosis (sexual reproduction) due to being polyploids. All of the yeast strains in flour are diploids. Diploids are able to undergo meiosis, which means that there is the possibility of hybrid strains forming and being selected via repitching. That is how all modern brewing strains were selected.
Some food for thought…
Great insight and well written.
Thanks
Good to see you again, Mark!
they must be loaded at degarde, they dump a 3rd of their beer? that is the most anti business thing i ever heard, how do they no go out of business?
They plan and budget for it. Last time I talked to the owner they were hoping to get it down to 20-25%. I understand that’s normal for a spontaneous fermentation brewery
gotcha
Indeed!
Indeed. Cheers!
Thanks guys! It is nice to see a few of the old regulars on the site. I am hoping to start brewing again one day, but it does not fit my lifestyle at the present time. Hopefully, I will find time to start brewing again after I retire in a couple of years.
amazing knowledge. Thank you
from about 2006-2017 I was pretty into wild/ambient.native/spontaneous/whatever you want to call it ferments. They are really hard and I had to dump about 50% of my attempts. The other 50% definitely benefited from blending with one another, as there was quite a bit of variation. The ones that turned out well and blended well have won some BOS and golds in competition though. I eventually stopped because I didnt want so much carboy clutter and I felt guilty it was so wasteful.
Can’t wait to see you dust off the stirplate and get back to it.
;D
In case you didn’t realize it, Mark is the guy who got us to stop usong stir plates!
Stir plate? What’s that?
;D
I too am glad to see you back, Mark! I have learned a lot from you in the past few years and hope to see you brewing again soon!
That’s the joke
I was wondering what you were up to. Good to see you back.