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Wild Culture capturing--attempts 1 and 2

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Updates!

The strawberry culture grew lots of yeast. And lots of mold. The mold seemed pretty contained to the surface of the liquid and the sides of the jar. But, I dumped it anyway. Mold is not so good for drinking. It smelled...weird. Not a smell I immediately associate with "toxic sludge", but also not a beer smell either. Ah well, I still have a quart of wort saved in a jar so I can always try again with some other fruit. (Wayne--some circumstantial evidence for your overripe berry theory. ;) )

The test brew for the overnight culture, which shows no mold yet, is cooling now. For ~1 gallon:
2 oz 2-row malt
2 oz Crystal 10 malt
1 lb light dry malt extract
1/4 oz Fuggles 30 mins (~15ish IBUs)
4 Hungarian medium toast oak cubes
Overnight yeast culture, liquid decanted and slurry pitched
OG should be about 1.050

The oak cubes are there for propagating the culture. I plan to repitch the slurry plus the cubes to inoculate the next batch. If it is a bigger batch, I'll add more cubes. Eventually I'd like to just be able to use cubes instead of saving slurry.

I will also be tasting the decanted starter beer, so stay tuned for the retching. :p I have some Hennepin to wash it down though, so you don't have to feel bad for me.

Tasting notes:
Aroma is spicy and a little appley. Taste is very slightly sour, with apple flavors. Aftertaste is a little malty/spicy. Not too bad really, but not very sour at all. Was hoping for a little more sour. Though it's not bad, so I guess that is good.
 
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I would say, yes, more or less. Not all mold grows at all temperatures, but you can get mold in your refrigerator (40ish), on the countertop (70ish), and definitely a lot of mold in warm solutions (90ish). I would guess that would be roughly the temperature range you're looking at, which unfortunately is the exact same range that the yeast is working in.

The environments of the yeast and mold are different though. Mold needs more oxygen, which is why it lives on the top of the liquid. Yeast can be perfectly happy in an anaerobic environment. Naturally, my culture capturing jars were aerated frequently to encourage growth. In theory, subsequent use of the mold culture in low-oxygen environments would mostly eliminate the mold count over several passes, especially if I racked out the liquid from below the mold. Hops play a role here too, and my starters were hopped at a very low rate (a few IBU). But, that's just more work than I need, especially since I seem to have a mold-free culture already. Let's hope it turns out interesting.
 
Still no visible activity on the test batch. I emailed Vinnie at Russian River to see if there were any special features of a wild fermentation batch. He basically said, sometimes it works and sometimes it don't. Think I might quick measure the SG tomorrow to see if anything is going on there.
 
Sometimes it works, and sometimes it don't. ;) I think that is the best way to sum up my experiences, too. But pH may also play a role. Although I didn't bother to measure the pH of my starter cultures (my bad), I can say anecdotally that all of my successful starter cultures came from mixtures of honey, water and apple juice (with an inherently lower pH than honey-water or malt-water would have alone).
 
The boogie has been laid down and the funk has arrived! Hooray! O0

Finally have visible activity today. The new apartment is warmer than the last, and it has been kind of hot lately (mid 80s, ahh!) but today is the first day that the fermenting area has gotten to 75. Maybe that has jump-started it. In any case, it is alive and kicking. :headbang:
 
Racked this gallon into a clean carboy. SG 1.025, which is kind of high. I'm going to leave it go for a few more days as-is and then I will probably wind up pitching some commercial yeast to finish it off so it won't blow up in the bottle. Taste is sweet, and apple spicy. Slight sour aroma and flavor. Not bad, but kind of blah. Would be a whole lot better with some aggressive carbonation.
 
Krausen happened. Excellent, I hope to get the SG down to a more reasonable spot with the muscle yeast and then rack to one of my tiny 3 qt jugs.
 
Where did you acquire a 3 quart jug? Those could be very handy to have spare.
 
Sasper said:
Where did you acquire a 3 quart jug? Those could be very handy to have spare.
Click to expand...

The places I bought 1 gallon jugs of apple juice now only have 3 qt jugs. Same price, less juice. :( But I guess they have their uses.

Wade, I figure that a good amount of my SG before adding commercial yeast was probably yeast-available, but maybe not so much for wild yeasts. Maltotriose maybe? I expect the FG to be close to 1.010-15, mostly just so I have the worry about explosions out of my head.
 
Racked again today. SG 1.010, so about where I expected it to be. Tastes pretty good, still has some funky spicy slightly-sour thing going on but drier now. Interesting, I am looking forward to bottling it in the next few months.
 
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