Thursday, July 14, 2016

Foraged Yeast Brew Day

Earlier this year I decided I wanted to try some yeast capturing again.  Last year I had some pretty bad experiences that resulted in lots of mold and some terrible smelling Mason jars around the house.  My original technique was to make a batch of extract wort and place the jars covered in cheese cloth around my yard in various places.  That seemed to be how a lot of people were doing it.  Well in two attempts, I have been very unsuccessful that way.  I'm sure it had to do with my technique as well as the microbes around my house.


After those failed attempts I decided to try another way recommended by Jeff Mello of Bootleg Biology.  This is also the technique that I spoke with Gerard Olson from Forest and Main Brewing Co. when I visited there earlier this year.  Basically you use foraged objects like flowers and fruits (among other things) to try and capture a wild yeast culture.  I recently wrote a small primer article for Craft Commander on foraging for wild yeast.  You can take a look at that here.  It's not exactly scientific but it covers the basic steps I used in capturing my culture I used in this beer.


For my culture I decided to user clover flowers from my front yard.  The afternoon I picked the flowers there was a ton of activity.  A mild breeze was blowing and bees were visible all over the flowers.  Hopefully I'll get something really nice out of this!



Recipe:  Foraged Yeast Beer
Brewer:  Gus
Batch:  15
Date:  7-9-16

Batch Size:  4.0 gal
Boil Size:  6.04 gal
Post Boil Volume:  4.16 gal  
Estimated OG:  1.042
Actual OG:  1.044
Estimated Color:  3.0 SRM
Estimated IBU:  20.0 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency:  74.60%
Est Mash Efficiency:  74.60%
Boil Time:  75 Minutes

Fermentables:
100% Pilsner Malt (Avangard)

Hops:
24.6 IBUs of Aramis @ 60 min


Yeast:
Foraged Yeast from Clover Flowers

Mash Schedule:
Temperature mash of 149F for 75 min with a 10 minute mashout at 168F


100% Avangard Pilsner malt

I mashed in for 75 min with the temperature of 149F.  I wanted to get something really fermentable and give the foraged culture something easy to work with.  100% Pilsner should give a good base to let whatever I've capture shine through.


Love seeing clear wort.

I boiled the wort for 75 min and added around 14g of Aramis hops at 60 minutes.  With this batch being so small I wasn't able to use my stainless hop spider so I put the hops in a nylon hop bag.


Nylon hop bag and 14g or so of Aramis hops

After the boil I recirculated the wort for about 15 minutes and then ran it through my heat exchanger to get the wort down to 68F.  I collected just under 4 gallons in the carboy and pitched my culture while keeping back a small bit for further propagation.  If this beer turns out well, I'll send some of the yeast slurry over to Jeff Mello.  I covered the top of the carboy with sanitized aluminum foil as I do with most of my beers.  I'll add a bung and airlock after activity starts to slow.

Now it's time for some fermentation!

Super simple brew day.  The smallest batch I've done on my system so far.  I didn't even have enough in the mash tun to use the thermometer in the side.  This wasn't a problem as I rely on the temperature probe I have in the outlet to regulate my mash temps.  I'm really looking forward to the outcome of this beer!  I'll also be foraging some more cultures very soon!

Updates:

7-10-16:  6AM krausen has already formed and fermentation is under way!



7-11-16:  Very active.  At least 3 inches of thick krausen on top and a nice yeasty smell coming from the carboy.



7-12-16:  Activity has slowed just a bit.  I swapped the foil for a bung and airlock but steady CO2 off gassing came through the 3 piece airlock when I added the Star-San solution to it.  Looking really promising.  The aroma was very similar to the starters.  Hints of honey, light tartness and a bit of citrus seemed to come through too.


7-24-16:  All signs of fermentation have stopped.  Looks like it has even flocculated really well.  I'll be packaging soon!

9-7-16:  Bottled the batch.

10-7-16:  Tasted one bottle.  Slight bit of THP there so I'm going to give it some more time before I do tasting notes.

Final tasting notes here!

Good things!

Andrew "Gus" Addkison
gusaddkison@gmail.com
@aaddkison on Twitter
on UnTappd:
Gus_13
on Instagram:
farmhouseobsession

10 comments:

  1. I wonder if it's styrene which creates the honey smell.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It could be! I'm not 100% sure. The sweet smell is fading a bit to more lemony but that could be whatever it was being broken down.

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  2. Can't wait to hear how the batch turns out!

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    Replies
    1. Still chugging along this morning. I'll be bottling all of this batch to send out if it's decent! I'll send you a bottle!

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  3. Awesome my man! I will be brewing with mine next week!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm headed out with some vials this weekend to try and capture some more things. I've got my eye on a fig tree and some honeysuckle!

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  4. Replies
    1. I'll finally have the tasting notes up this weekend for this one. It took it some time to get over a bit of THP in the bottle.

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