February 6, 2021 - 6:15pm
Yeast Water and Beer
I was drinking a fin du monde the other day and noticed the visible yeast sediment in the bottom of the bottle. Those beers are fermented in bottle, but I don't know how much, if any, of that yeast is active or alive by the time the consumer opens it. Can it be cultivated, and kept as a yeast water solution, sort of how people do with the wild yeasts on fruit? How should it be fed, would whole groats of various grains work, or should fruits be the food of choice? I'm going to try and cultivate this and I'll keep posting, but it will undoubtedly take time before something, if anything, happens. In the meantime I would love to hear anyone else's thoughts on this, as I really have no clue what to expect.
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Hi Windy yes the bottle fermented beers and stouts are able to produce you with an interesting starter i regularly save the trub from the bottom of my fermenting keg usually getting 2 litres or more i just cap it and store in the fridge. It does settle out but when i want to use some its just a matter of giving it a bit of a shake and pouring some out. i have used it both directly as well as feeding it on just as you would do with a sour dough culture, it enables the beer to become accustomed to its new food source and me to a gauge its levening power. A worthwhile exercise all round that brings some interesting flavour profiles and dare i say some uniqueness to your produce. look forward to seeing your results. I often offer samples to some local bread enthusiasts who might want to have a play but dont get to many acceptances. i did get my bottles mixed up in the fridge once and a friend thought i was trying to kill him when he drank it. I clearly mark it now and tend to keep it in clear 2 litre drink bottles rather than the 700ml PET bottles that hold the beer.
Kind Regards Derek
that's awesome! I will try this again, I started with so little and fed my mixture with whole oats, so nothing happened with mine. But I will try again and feed it fresh flour.
If you do use a bottle fermented beer it will require a bit of a build so start off with a small amount and build it remember it will be tripling each time its fed. dont be afraid to revert to a small amount again rather than use heaps of flour, and use the discard in another dough not especially for its levening power in the early stages but as an ingredient % of fermented flour..I used to maintain a sour dough starter at the college i worked at and the so called daily discard was used in the dinner roll production for the training restaurant. A number of the chefs agreed it bought an extra dimension to the flavour profile of the dinner rolls that were still using yeast as their raising agent. If you can find someone in your local community that does a bit of home brewing you will be able to have a good supply to try and perhaps a swap of a loaf will work very well.
i just looked back at some of my past blog entries and these may interest you
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/62347/beer-barm
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/16684/dark-ale-white-flour
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/36059/bake-revisited
So before each time we open a bottle of bottled beer, should we shake it?