Wild & Sour Brewing

I have had a long interest in brewing sour and wild beers, but my interest and brewing of these beers was frequently interrupted by the 12-year odyssey that fell between my completion of a BSc and my now-career as a scientist/professor.  Now that I'm (hopefully) settled, I am beginning to seriously brew these styles of beer, and have begun a new project to purify strains of wild yeast suitable for brewing.

This page contains all of my posts in relation to this topic - including recipes/updates/tasting notes on sour & wild brews, as well as a complete listing of all "Hunting Wild Yeast" series.  This series, planned for the upcoming year (i.e. 2013) will follow me (and a few members of my brewclub's) attempts to capturing, purifying and characterize strains of wild yeast.

Legend:

• General Sour/Wild Brewing
• Wild Brewing Organisms
• Recipes & Brews
• Video Series: Capturing Wild Yeasts
• Hunting Wild Yeasts
• Random Wild-Yeast Posts

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General Sour/Wild Beer Brewing

Wild Brewing Organisms: Outlines of various wild brewing organisms - where they are found, what they look like, and what they do. 

• Anatomy of a Wild Ferment - An article describing what goes on during a wild ferment.
• Yeast: Species,Strains and Variability - a discussion of what comprises a strain versus a species of yeast.
• Brettanomyces - An article describing the most commonly encountered wild yeast, including a brief description of how it can be isolated & identified from the dregs of a wild ferment.

Recipes & Brews

• All-Brett Porter. An experimental porter, using Brettanomyces as the sole fermentative organism in the beer.
• Gnarly Roots - barley wine double-fermented with saccharomyces & brettanomyces yeasts. Recipe & Brewday.   Tasting #1 (Nov 2013).  Fancy-Schmancy Labels.
• Summer Sour - a simple, quick Berliner Weiss recipe based on a sour-mash method.  A great summer beer, and a great way for people to get into wilds & sours.

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Video Series: Capturing Wild Yeasts

• Part 1 and 2:
• Part 1: Two processes for capturing wild yeasts
• part 2: Purifying Wild Yeasts
• Part 3: Basic Identification of Wild Yeasts

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Hunting Wild Yeasts

• Introduction - an overview of the project.
• Old School Identification of Wild Yeasts & Bacteria - A rough outline of how I will not be identifying the yeasts in this project - namely, morphological + biochemical identification
• Identifying Yeasts Using Ribosomal Sequencing - A high-tech way of identifying wild an domestic yeasts & bacteria.
• Yeast Identification Test - the first test (and somewhat of a failure  using PCR & DNA sequencing to identify yeast.
• Yeast Identification Test Part Deux - the second test of my sequencing method to identify yeast.  The method worked, with limitations...
• First Wild Yeast Hunt - my first hunt for wild yeast, using yeast captured from 2-row Canadian malt.
• Results of the First Wild Yeast Hunt
• Another Yeast Identification Test - this time a success.
• 2014 Wild Yeast Hunt - this time using fruit & vegetables from my wife's garden as a yeast source.
• First Results & a New Yeast Bank

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Random

• Brett Trois - A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Species identification of White Labs WLP644 as a Saccharomyces, rather than the Brettanomyces it is thought to be.
• White labs provides us with a bit of an update
• Lacto Starter: How to make a starter for Lactobacilli.