{"id":661,"date":"2013-03-21T20:51:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-21T20:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/suigenerisbrewing.com\/index.php\/2013\/03\/21\/introduction-to-hunting-wild-yeasts\/"},"modified":"2017-09-22T20:38:58","modified_gmt":"2017-09-22T20:38:58","slug":"introduction-to-hunting-wild-yeasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/suigenerisbrewing.com\/index.php\/2013\/03\/21\/introduction-to-hunting-wild-yeasts\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction to Hunting Wild Yeasts"},"content":{"rendered":"

My interest in brewing has been life-long; I\u00a0remember\u00a0helping my grandfather to make\u00a0schnapps\u00a0and applejack when I was a little kid. \u00a0As soon as I was legally able to (that’s all I’ll admit to here) I began homebrewing beer. \u00a0At the same time I began my undergraduate degree in Cellular, Molecular and\u00a0Microbial\u00a0Biology, leading to a early fusion of my education and hobbies. By the age of 20 I had engaged in a series of experiments to evolve brewing strains (discussed\u00a0extensively\u00a0in this thread<\/a>, over at homebrewtalk). At the same time I began brewing sour & wild beers.<\/p>\n

I then made the choice (no comment on whether it was a good one or not) to do a PhD, and thus entered a 7 year period where I was\u00a0constantly\u00a0moving and never sure where I’d be 6 months into the future (followed by another 4 years of the same whilst post-doc’ing). Over successive moves I lost my library of “custom yeasts”, but not the passion and interest in developing my own strains & wild brewing.<\/p>\n

This interest was rekindled last year, after I joined the London Homebrewers Build<\/a>, my local brew club. \u00a0Within the first two meetings I had run into a couple of people interested in brewing with wild yeast. These (beer\u00a0fueled) discussions led to what I think is a unique project \u00a0– we aim to capture, purify and characterize a range of local wild yeasts, with the hopes of developing a strain (or two, or three) suitable for brewing.<\/p>\n

This is the introductory post in what will be a series\u00a0cataloguing\u00a0this process. \u00a0Below the fold is an outline of the\u00a0strategy\u00a0and some resources we are using.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

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So where do we begin?<\/h3>\n

The answer is, “with those who have done similar things before us”. \u00a0I say ‘similar’, because at this point the closest I’ve seen to what we’re aiming to do is people isolating yeasts from\u00a0commercial\u00a0wild beers, or working with Brettanomyces<\/i>. \u00a0Below is a list of links to blogs and other resources covering the purification and identification of these yeasts. \u00a0This list will likely grow as this project progresses:<\/p>\n