My wife and I soaked some crab apples in starter-strength wort overnight to see what would grow. After about ten days, the stuff on top looks like yeast, at least I think it doesn’t look like mold. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
Lactobacillus?
I’ve seen Lacto in culture before. Pretty sure this isn’t it. I do have a microscope.
I vote wild yeast.
Doesn’t look like mold. What does it smell like?
Doesn’t smell “bad” by any means.
Looks like a pellicle. I’d guess that there’s some Brett in there.
Yeah, some brett, some lacto, Aceto, maybe some pedio. Thing about wild cultures, it’s all in there. at this point probably all the nasty nasties are done (no entero, coliform etc.) especially if it smells good.
Have at. next time you brew target an extra 1-2 gallons of wort, do a side boil on the stove top with old hops and pitch it in.
I wasn’t sure what to do with it at this point. I have some Mycologist friends who can take a look at it. I might gram stain a sample to be sure I don’t see any gram negative (enteric) bacteria. I did buy some aged lambic hops for this experiment. I’ll probably try to do some more wild collections, too.
You’re probably going to find a wide array of active yeast and bacteria, especially early on. Some sugar-eating yeast will form pellicles, as will most bacteria. I’d guess you have dozens of active lifeforms in there right now. Some have probably died off from lack of nutrients, ph and alcohol by this point.
there are probably some enteric bacteria in there but not many, and not in a healthy state at this point. As RAM mentions, at this point the pH and alcohol levels are going to inhibit the growth of anything outright bad for you. (whether it’ll be tasty or not ::))
If you’re concerned about potential contamination with nasties, you could also pre-acidify your wort with lactic acid to the low 4’s. This will keep a lot of the bad bugs at bay while the good guys can still get going.
Wild stuff all looks like that. It’s impossible to know how the cider will turn out. Drink it young so that you won’t need to risk it getting out of control.
+1 Does it still smell good? Pitch some into a crab apple blonde and let it go nuts!
Can’t brew until next week. Hope it will keep until then. I’ll probably hold a small portion of it back, so I can keep it going if it’s good.
It smells wonderful, sour–and no ass whatsoever. Gonna make a crab apple blonde like you suggested and cross my fingers.
I may have too try this lots of orchards around me, my girlfriends dad has a couple. Did you cut up the apples?
I have 5 apple and 2 pear trees that I just planted but it will be a couple years before I see any fruit from them.