Episode 70
Capturing Wild Yeast for Beer Brewing w/ Jody Cleaveland
How does a brewer go from childhood beer aversion to resurrecting historical beer styles? Join Gary Arndt and Bobby Fleshman as they chat with Jody Cleveland of Bare Bones Brewery about his unique brewing journey. Discover the process of capturing wild yeast from fallen leaves and why it’s more than just about brewing beer—it's about preserving history.
Check out Bare Bones Brewery: https://barebonesbrewery.us/
PATREON
Support the show! Get episodes 1 week early and bonus merch: patreon.com/respectingthebeerpodcast
FACEBOOK GROUP
Got a question about beer or just want to get social? Join the RtB Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/respectingthebeer
Got a question? Email us at respectingthebeer@gmail.com
--
TIMELINE
00:00 Introducing Jody Cleaveland
00:33 Jody's Beer Journey
02:32 Home Brewing to Professional Brewing
04:01 Recreating Historical Recipes
13:55 Capturing Wild Yeast
30:29 Challenges in Yeast Management
33:44 Join the Patreon!
--
CREDITS
Hosts:
Joel Hermansen
Music by Sarah Lynn Huss
Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow
Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co
Transcript
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Respecting the Beer.
Speaker:My name is Gary Arndt.
Speaker:With me again is the brewer to the Stars Bobby f Fleshman.
Speaker:And, and by stars I don't mean celebrities, I mean gas giants.
Speaker:Although that could be celebrities too in circles, don't same in circles.
Speaker:But today we got another Wisconsin brewer with us.
Speaker:We got Jody Cleveland, who's the head brewer at the Bare Bones Brewery down in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Speaker:Glad to have you on the show.
Speaker:Glad to be here.
Speaker:Why don't you explain how you got involved in beer and brewing and your background, and then later how you got involved with these guys..
Speaker:I didn't drink beer for a long time.
Speaker:My dad growing up would always give me his beer and say, you want to have my beer?
Speaker:And I'm like, cool.
Speaker:I'm a kid.
Speaker:And you know, I get to drink beer and it was always old style and I hated it.
Speaker:So I didn't drink beer for a very long time.
Speaker:Uh, but.
Speaker:As an adult, I came across a beer that I, I liked very much, and it was the first time I really truly liked a beer.
Speaker:And at that time, uh, festival Foods in Oshkosh would let you order pretty much any beer you wanted.
Speaker:And what was the beer?
Speaker:Tried to, uh, it was Crimson Voodoo by Dixie Brewing Company, which is now furlough.
Speaker:What kind of beer is it?
Speaker:Uh, it's an amber lager.
Speaker:I just, uh, I loved everything about it.
Speaker:This is around
Speaker:1950.
Speaker:We're talking, I'm trying to say the no, what, 2000?
Speaker:Uh, well, 1990.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I just thought I'd be hilarious.
Speaker:You didn't like old style, but it was like, and Coor's Light was the thing that turned on the light for me.
Speaker:Well, the funny thing is now anytime I see old style, I have to get it.
Speaker:Uh, no.
Speaker:I, it took forever for a festival to get back to me.
Speaker:They finally got back to me and they said, well, we've been really trying to get this beer.
Speaker:Unfortunately, the brewery.
Speaker:Was destroyed by Katrina and the brewery was, uh, all of the copper was looted from the brewery.
Speaker:So now I couldn't get this beer that I finally found that I liked, and I couldn't find it anywhere.
Speaker:I just happened to be at Fleet Farm like a month or two later, and I don't know why.
Speaker:I just saw this Mr. Beer kit and it was like 75% off.
Speaker:I'm like, sure, why not?
Speaker:I got that and the beer didn't turn out quite as good as I had hoped, but it was way better than I expected, and I got hooked pretty quickly after that.
Speaker:And that kit is responsible for how many brew?
Speaker:Oh, so many getting into this.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It comes up all the time and you can still get it.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:Holiday
Speaker:season that triples.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I, I think Bobby's right.
Speaker:There's a lot of people that kind of go down this path of home brewing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But then what was the decision to make you go pro?
Speaker:Like what round of the draft were you drafted in?
Speaker:Uh, I couldn't drink my beer fast enough.
Speaker:I was brewing a lot.
Speaker:I was sometimes brewing three, four times a week.
Speaker:My basement was filled with fermentors.
Speaker:I couldn't keep buying more.
Speaker:I had a grater in my house with eight taps.
Speaker:Again, I can't drink that much, not enough friends to give it all to.
Speaker:Uh, and I was thinking that I wanted to make a career change and I've done that before.
Speaker:I'm getting older.
Speaker:Is that something I really want to do?
Speaker:And I was able to, uh, help out at bare bones.
Speaker:There was a new brewer that had just started there.
Speaker:Uh, and I was able to, I wanted to be there as much as I could, so I went and I helped them in any way that I could.
Speaker:And I ended up helping there for about a year.
Speaker:And an opportunity came up at Fox River Brewing in Oshkosh where they were willing to hire me on part-time and they, I was dying every day 'cause I had a sedentary job and now I'm, I'm just, you know, I'm on my feet, I'm lifting heavy things, I'm doing all these things and every time I got back to work at my real job, I was.
Speaker:Hating life.
Speaker:So that told me I should probably pursue this.
Speaker:And then an opportunity came up at bare bones and got, and when was that?
Speaker:Uh, it'll be seven years in about a week.
Speaker:So I've been there for seven years now.
Speaker:A lot of the brewers we have here have some sort of beer that they specialize in.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Maybe not the only thing they make, but.
Speaker:Something that's kind of their calling card.
Speaker:What would you say that is for, for you and Bare Bones?
Speaker:For me and Bare Bones, it would be Oshkosh Lager.
Speaker:Uh, one of the things I brewed the most when I was home brewing, uh, a good friend of mine was able to, is able to find all these classic recipes that were all the, at all the old Oshkosh breweries.
Speaker:And I just love that history and making things that did exist at one time but don't anymore.
Speaker:And I just wanted to be part of that history.
Speaker:So is this like son of
Speaker:Chief Oshkosh?
Speaker:Sort of, it's kind of my love letter to those beers.
Speaker:It's not the same thing at all, but it's kind of my take on.
Speaker:If it were being made today, this is the kind of beer that that would be.
Speaker:So that's the one, it's, it's probably one of the most nondescript beers we have, but it's the one I'm the most proud of and the one that, that's my go-to whenever I drink.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:What's the biggest seller for you guys?
Speaker:Uh, we have an amber.
Speaker:It wasn't Amber Ale, now it's an Amber Lager.
Speaker:And that's by far, um, that one in, in Oshkosh lager kind of head in head.
Speaker:Uh, it kind of goes every year.
Speaker:It goes back and forth between Amber and Oshkosh lager.
Speaker:How, how are these resurrected styles selling?
Speaker:Because I know you and I would drink them all day.
Speaker:We're brewers.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We, we love these, these, uh, you call 'em love letters.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, to their, to what they're inspired by.
Speaker:Well, and the, the we, I call 'em the heritage beers.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:For all the classic ones.
Speaker:And I, I try to hit as many of the different breweries, even the more obscure ones that weren't around for as long.
Speaker:Um, and I'm always nervous about how many people will care about these older ones.
Speaker:And it's so neat that first day that it comes out.
Speaker:You see all these people that.
Speaker:I'm hoping to get to come back to the brewery again, but for that day, there are people in their eighties, nineties, um, people that, oh, my dad used to work at People's or, or that kind of thing.
Speaker:And it's really neat to have conversations with people about that and sales tape are off after that, but it's always, um, a pretty steady seller when those are out.
Speaker:Have, have you had people come in and try beers you make that are inspired by these other beers that that can somehow give you feedback over those decades that gapped the releases?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And uh, it's, I take the win.
Speaker:It, it's always been where people are positive about, yeah, this is exactly how I remember.
Speaker:Granted, it's been what, 50, 60 years, sometimes longer for these, yeah.
Speaker:But my favorite was not at bare bones, it was at a home brew event for charity that my home brew club used to do.
Speaker:And I was brewing, uh, I can't remember what it was.
Speaker:I think it was raw.
Speaker:And this guy comes in, he said, I saw that you had this beer and the program I had to come in when I was a kid.
Speaker:My dad used to buy a barrel of this beer at the brewery.
Speaker:We would go, he'd always take me with me and you know, we would drink the beer sitting at the bar.
Speaker:And I just wanted to try it again.
Speaker:So he drinks it and he said, man, this is exactly what I remember.
Speaker:And I, I thanked him and he said, well, it never was a very good beer,
Speaker:so I nailed it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Just outta curiosity and, and maybe Bob, you knows this, how many of these old recipes are floating around?
Speaker:I wouldn't.
Speaker:And how many have been lost?
Speaker:I wouldn't say any are floating around.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:Yeah, there's the Oshkosh beer blog.
Speaker:A friend of mine, Lee Ry Herer writes that and he has great investigative skills, so he's able to find these.
Speaker:Some of 'em, like, uh, when I did People's Bach, that's actually from the brewer.
Speaker:I was able to meet him before he passed away a few years ago.
Speaker:So some are from the brewers.
Speaker:Uh, others he'll have to look at, uh, purchase orders.
Speaker:The types of things that they were buying and using, uh, based.
Speaker:And then look at what that beer style would've been and kind of do the math to connect 'em.
Speaker:But the, the tougher part is we don't wanna recreate the recipe as it was.
Speaker:We want to recreate the recipe as it would've looked, smelled, tasted, at least the best that we can.
Speaker:I did
Speaker:an episode of my podcast on Schlitz Oh, nice.
Speaker:And Schlitz was the biggest beer in the world.
Speaker:And by, I think it was late eighties or nineties, it went outta business and then Pabst bought the rights to it and they wanted to bring it back as like a heritage beer.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:The recipe was lost for the biggest beer in the world.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Which I thought was hilarious.
Speaker:And they had to do exactly that.
Speaker:They had to go back over like the, the financial documents.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Talk to some of the brewers and kind of cobble it together.
Speaker:Uh, because nothing was ever written down that survived.
Speaker:Well, and there were some of these brewers that, uh, their mind was starting to go.
Speaker:And as you talk to 'em about these old recipes, there were guys that just knew it, like right off the cuff what it was.
Speaker:It's like you haven't made that in 50, 60 years, and you can just remember it like that.
Speaker:I suppose if you do it enough, it might
Speaker:be like, have music on, uh, locks.
Speaker:People that have Alzheimer's, they can say things that they normally couldn't.
Speaker:Yeah, right.
Speaker:Just outta just out of curiosity, if either of you were hit by a bus tomorrow.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Could someone remake your beers?
Speaker:Oh, I'm, I'm a, I'm a data, a record freak, so, yeah.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:So everything is recorded.
Speaker:Yeah, me
Speaker:too.
Speaker:I, I probably keep too many notes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I would say though, even if you and I both think that we keep all the notes we don't, right?
Speaker:There's always more between all the lines.
Speaker:And I think that's what makes the, the brewery unable to just hand over a recipe to another brewery, right?
Speaker:That it needs the brewer to do that handoff.
Speaker:'cause there's all this nuance that happens in the, in the middle of it all.
Speaker:I suppose it's like if you see your grandma make brownies.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And she passes that recipe onto you.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Line by line.
Speaker:It never quite tastes the same.
Speaker:'cause there's something that, that she does in there that you're not quite aware of.
Speaker:And in the brew world that she might not even think about.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:In the brew world we talk about Oh, but it's a different system.
Speaker:It's not that, that's too, that, that, that's too broad of a stroke or too easy of a way to, to uh, explain away the differences and the, and the way the beer's turned out in the different facilities.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's the people.
Speaker:And I always love going to different breweries and, and watching people brew.
Speaker:'cause it's.
Speaker:We're all doing the same thing, but we're all doing it different than everybody else.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:And I don't know that I've ever gone to a brewery and not learned something.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:From, from the way that they're doing
Speaker:this is, this is the great thing about collaborations.
Speaker:They're frustrating in so many ways from the marketing side and selling the beer side and all that, but doing a collaboration really does teach you about how, how you do your own thing.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:We were talking about, uh, these old styles and I, I had to mention that Stone Arch makes, uh, Adler Brow by George Walter Brewing.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Uh, I'm, I'm actually looking
Speaker:where the police station was right
Speaker:there.
Speaker:I'm from where I'm sitting, it's a block away from where we're sitting here.
Speaker:We can see where the police station once or is now, and where George Walter once stood.
Speaker:And Stone Arch has really taken the mantle of, of, uh, their brand and they make this, this Adler Brow.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:They do a great job with it too.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's a good one.
Speaker:But it, it's so great having these styles be resurrected and Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Live on
Speaker:Yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker:And, and most of them are, these are adjuncted, they have rice or corn.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And, and I, I think that's pretty much the case when you go back 80 years or so that they.
Speaker:These, most of these light lagers will have been adjuncted
Speaker:in the cluster hops.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I might be one of the only people in Wisconsin actively buying cluster hops right now.
Speaker:Are they, are they coming in the, the T 100 hop plugs where they don't even process?
Speaker:No, thankfully not.
Speaker:'cause I don't use that many of 'em.
Speaker:But for the uninitiated, what is a cluster hop?
Speaker:Oh, I mean, it's a variety.
Speaker:It's a variety.
Speaker:Yeah, but it's a low yield.
Speaker:Uh, I don't think very many brewers use it.
Speaker:So it hasn't been bred for agronomic reasons.
Speaker:It, it tastes good, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But it's not bred for agronomic purposes.
Speaker:And one of the neat things back to the history is that there was a hop farm in Oshkosh, well, not Oshkosh, uh, Larson.
Speaker:Lee's gonna be like yelling at me right now.
Speaker:Um, we should, we should get Lee on here, by the way.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We should be Oshkosh beer blog.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, but there was a, a hop farm in the 1800s, uh, right now if you go along the Wheel Wash Trail, and I don't know the number of times I rode past these and never noticed 'em.
Speaker:Uh, hops are, are notoriously very difficult to kill, and even though the farm has been turned over so many times.
Speaker:There are still hot plants on the edge of where that farm was on the Wheel Wash Trail.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:And so they're still growing and those hot plants have been there since the 18 hundreds and would've been used in, you know, Oshkosh brew.
Speaker:So were these noble hops that were, they were
Speaker:cluster?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:So noble meaning were, were the land race hops from, from Europe and Germany.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Brought here,
Speaker:I want to say they're from New York, but I could be getting that wrong too.
Speaker:Um, but Lee was actually able to pull rhizomes from Yeah.
Speaker:That and he's got 'em growing in his backyard.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And there's big Ed's hop yard in, I think it's Oshkosh or Oshkosh ish, where they're growing those hops.
Speaker:There's also Hidden Valley hops where they're also growing some of these hops, so I'm hoping eventually I'll be able to actually use hops from that plant.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:In Oshkosh lager.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Anyone that doesn't know a rhizome is more or less a root that, uh, will sprout and, and create a, a, a bind of hops that will climb 25 feet in the air.
Speaker:And, uh, they're, they're weeds and in other contexts they're just weeds.
Speaker:But in beer, we try to, we celebrate 'em.
Speaker:They're fun weeds though.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:And, and they are actually cousins to marijuana.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So they're, they are weeds in multiple senses.
Speaker:Do you want to, do you wanna talk about gris?
Speaker:I, I feel like maybe you're talking about the, the lagers you're doing, but the reason we brought you on here, this is the reason I got excited about bringing you on here, Jodi.
Speaker:Was.
Speaker:You, you're doing some cool stuff, that it's somewhere between professional brewing and home brewing and how you've been able to acquire the, the yeast in your own backyard and, and do this, this pro.
Speaker:You should just describe what, what happened here?
Speaker:What, what's going on here?
Speaker:Uh, it's an interesting story.
Speaker:It was kind of two different paths that kind of came together.
Speaker:One of 'em, I, I have pet rabbits and for some reason I felt the need to.
Speaker:Make a beer.
Speaker:That was a tribute to my rabbits.
Speaker:I don't know why.
Speaker:Um, and I couldn't think of what to make.
Speaker:I thought about carrots, but rabbits don't really eat carrots.
Speaker:They really like bananas.
Speaker:Well, half of ein doesn't really, didn't really do it for me.
Speaker:And I happened to be listening to this podcast, I can't remember which one it was.
Speaker:And they were talking about this old Belgian style called Gris set.
Speaker:And it was, uh, miners, uh, that would, would drink this.
Speaker:Beers a low alcohol beer is like 3.2% and they would use.
Speaker:Hay 'cause it was very abundant in as a filter in the mash bed.
Speaker:And that's where it clicked in for me.
Speaker:It's kind of like a light size on and around the same time I had started noticing with how often I was brewing.
Speaker:Yeast gets really, really expensive.
Speaker:So I started working on creating a yeast bank.
Speaker:I had vials and vials and vials in my, my freezer of all these different varieties that I would use.
Speaker:And I started.
Speaker:Wait, ones
Speaker:that, that you collected or No, no,
Speaker:no.
Speaker:So I'd like it, like white labs eight 30.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I would take one vial and make it good for 18 beers.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So then I'm taking my $12 or whatever and spreading it out.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Just to, you know.
Speaker:And any, anyone that doesn't know yeast, uh, will multiply four.
Speaker:They'll, they'll, they'll, they'll divide four times during one fermentation, give or take.
Speaker:And then you can also take the offspring of that to simplify it and put it into another beer and another, and another up to 10 or more times.
Speaker:It's like 40 generations comes out of this process.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And uh, I, I really enjoyed doing that part and I wasn't expecting when I got into brewing how much I would just become fascinated with the east.
Speaker:So I, I think I liked doing the yeast bank stuff more than I actually liked brewing, and I was fascinated by that.
Speaker:And I started learning more and more about, uh, being able to actually capture your own yeast.
Speaker:So I tried it with all these different things.
Speaker:We have apple trees in the, in the yard.
Speaker:I tried that.
Speaker:I tried honey, I tried all these different things and it just, nothing.
Speaker:It was either so sour that you would feel it in the back of your throat, like it hurt.
Speaker:Or it just tasted like, uh, it's hard to describe, like earthy, just not very good.
Speaker:And I came across this website and he's a microbiologist by trade and a home brewer by hobby.
Speaker:And he had these stories on all these different things that he did to capture yeast, uh, in the wild.
Speaker:And he found what worked the best were leaves that were laying on the ground.
Speaker:And I came across this, it was kind of late summer.
Speaker:And I, I just so happen to have a pet cemetery in my backyard and that's where all of the leaves would fall and kind of catch.
Speaker:'cause that's the edge of the, that, that's way creepy.
Speaker:No, not at all.
Speaker:Uh, it's fun when you're trying to name the east though.
Speaker:Do I call it gauge?
Speaker:Do I call it church?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, but that's where all the leaves would blow is they would blow up against those trees in the backyard.
Speaker:So that's where I was able to get the most of 'em.
Speaker:And I was able to take those leaves and grow up the yeast.
Speaker:And surprisingly, I made a beer with it and it kind of had a size on light quality to it.
Speaker:So I remembered that cassette style and I thought this might work really well with that.
Speaker:So I was able to, um, when I did capture the yeast, I, I. Tried to isolate it down to a single cell.
Speaker:So I did, um, I streaked it on agar, uh, trying to get it isolated.
Speaker:Did you buy these plates
Speaker:or are you made Yeah, so this is, this is yeast from me.
Speaker:Well, no,
Speaker:I would get plates now.
Speaker:I, I got agar that Okay.
Speaker:Was, um, like wort?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Wort agar.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Mainly 'cause you want something, the only thing you want to grow is something that would.
Speaker:Ferment a beer.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You don't want to get other stuff.
Speaker:So it's a food source that if it grows on it, then it might be good for making beer.
Speaker:So, yeah.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Just again, for the uninitiated right, you're literally taking a leaf Yes.
Speaker:Found on the ground.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:You're rubbing it on.
Speaker:No, no.
Speaker:So explain the process, how you, how one goes from leaf on the ground to beer.
Speaker:So you make a, a very specific type of wort, so you're sort of making beer, um, but you have to be very careful on the pH.
Speaker:What you're making 'cause you don't want to get botulism or have other stuff that's not good for you to grow in it.
Speaker:And
Speaker:4.6 is that magic number.
Speaker:That sounds right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Or pH, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, so you have to make sure it's a very specific pH.
Speaker:So, um, what I took is, I, I took Everclear and diluted it with this where I can't remember exactly what the percentage alcohol you want out of it.
Speaker:You want a little bit of IBU in it.
Speaker:So you do a little bit of hops to keep, uh, certain other bacterias from growing.
Speaker:Man, we're gonna open up a lot of podcasts here.
Speaker:So, so the, so the IBUs keep the, the bacteria from growing if they were to be in that mix, right?
Speaker:So you have a wart.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And then you just dump in a bag of leaves.
Speaker:Well, I, I grabbed a handful and with that I had gloves on, which at that point probably didn't matter 'cause there leaves in the backyard.
Speaker:But I was trying to be sanitary with something that's not, and you put 'em in the jar and, uh.
Speaker:You, you seal up the jar with an airlock just like you would if you were making a beer.
Speaker:And it sat on my kitchen counter for a long time.
Speaker:I, I, it got to the point where I told myself, this is it's time to dump it.
Speaker:Nothing's happening.
Speaker:And when I said that, I started seeing bubbles.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So I let it go for a little bit longer.
Speaker:And when the bubbles were done, I. Took the lid off.
Speaker:It smelled good.
Speaker:I didn't smell mold.
Speaker:There was no mold around it.
Speaker:It didn't smell rancid, nothing like that.
Speaker:It actually smelled a little bit like a beer,
Speaker:but, but there was this cison inspiration.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So it had the pH phenolic positivity.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So it had whatever that was that that right meat reminded you of Cison.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So then I took it and I wasn't sure, I didn't want to just take that.
Speaker:Well, I think I did just take.
Speaker:That liquid had made a beer with it, but then I wanted to try to isolate only beer friendly from it.
Speaker:And that's when I started getting more sciency on it and got the, the agar and the plates and stuff like that.
Speaker:And I had done a little bit of streaking before.
Speaker:Um, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Speaker:Are we, are we, are we ready for that?
Speaker:Well, you were talking about that in the parking lot before.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:There was a naked mannequin before
Speaker:we started.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But you mean by that, that you were, you had these circular, these, these petri dishes with agar poured into them.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:You were, you were laying, laying this, this, uh, medium that contained a cell or a million on it, right.
Speaker:And you were able to somehow streak it out down to one.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I just took a inoculation loop it's called.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Which basically like a, a thin wire and dip it into, uh, what was at the bottom of that, um, what I had grown in the bottom of that jar.
Speaker:And you just kinda rub it.
Speaker:On that plate and then sterilize your loop, and then you take from that and you keep doing that full column.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Kinda crosswise until you finally pull out just one or two cells.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And then let that go.
Speaker:And then once that came up, I was down to a very small colony and that last streak that I did on there.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And then from that, I very slowly built that up.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Into a beer of sorts.
Speaker:And then you sneezed in it and you had to start over.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So then I took that and I was doing this multiple times and I, I had so many experiments 'cause which one was the best one?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then once I got one where it's like, this is beer, this is a beer, I would actually go to the store and purposely buy.
Speaker:Then I took that and then I made, uh, a larger yeast bank from that.
Speaker:I was able to build it up and then pull some out, you know, freeze it.
Speaker:So I've, I've got that set aside so I can make this beer again.
Speaker:And I did a little bit of this myself with the University Lawrence University down the street.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Which was collaborating with University of Wisconsin.
Speaker:We were doing the same thing.
Speaker:We were taking trees or leaves and sticks, throwing 'em into medium and stuff would grow.
Speaker:And we were looking for, when we, when we were plating this stuff out, we were looking for.
Speaker:Um, can it grow in alcohol?
Speaker:That's important if you're making beer right, can it survive in alcohol?
Speaker:Can it handle IBUs?
Speaker:Can it handle hops?
Speaker:That's important.
Speaker:If you wanna make a beer, uh, does it make diacetyl, which is that butter flavors?
Speaker:None of us wanna see rarely in a beer.
Speaker:Uh, and then.
Speaker:I guess the, the last one would be like acid aldehyde was another one.
Speaker:If it creates a lot of like green apple flavors, right?
Speaker:We wanna avoid that.
Speaker:But otherwise we said if, oh, and it clears.
Speaker:That's number five.
Speaker:It has to be able to f floate drop out and make a clear beer.
Speaker:It in a modern brewing sense, you don't want beer or yeast to hang out and make a cloudy mess of your, of your end product.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So anyway, yeah, I've, I had some familiarity,
Speaker:but then did you have any, did you have any luck with that?
Speaker:Yeah, we have a whole library down at the, at the university.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:And you go back and revisit our notes and our spreadsheets whenever the dust settles, whenever we enter our slow season, as they say.
Speaker:Um, what, what'd you do with, what did you do with it after you, after you had it?
Speaker:So you isolated some this thing and then what?
Speaker:Uh, then I was a little paranoid to use it, and I didn't do anything with it for a long time.
Speaker:It's like I have this set amount of it and I really, really like the beer a lot and I wanted to make it again, but I didn't want to use up what I had.
Speaker:And then I just got to a point where I, I realized that's really stupid.
Speaker:'cause I can't enjoy it if it's just sitting there and it's not gonna survive forever in my freezer.
Speaker:I have to be able to use it and I've made it twice at Bare Bones and it thankfully worked each time.
Speaker:And it just, it's such a, there's a lot going on with it, even though it's a fairly simple beer.
Speaker:Um, but it's just, it's kind of cool just having styles that you don't really see very often.
Speaker:Have you guys heard of, have you heard of Gris Set?
Speaker:Uh, no, but I was honestly just looking at it.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:While you guys are talking about it.
Speaker:And it's like a sasan, isn't it?
Speaker:Or, yeah, but it's like 3%.
Speaker:So it's like a lighter sasan.
Speaker:Very,
Speaker:very much.
Speaker:Coincidentally, we made a a 3% saan downstairs.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:And it's got this calamansi fruit in it, and, uh, it's, which is kinda lemon and lime tropical tart and dry and bitter and all that stuff.
Speaker:But did we talk about the gris set, where it ended up?
Speaker:Because that was the punchline.
Speaker:Like where, where does this, where does this yeast go?
Speaker:So I just, I had brought you some, unfortunately it's not on tap right now.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm not exactly sure when this will air.
Speaker:I am planning on making it again and making a little bit more of it, uh, especially as we get closer to summer.
Speaker:I had meant to make it last summer, and instead I, I brewed it on the coldest day.
Speaker:Of 2024, uh, for a 3.2% beer.
Speaker:So I'm hoping to have this for the summer.
Speaker:Perfect.
Speaker:Time to accidentally leave a barrel of doppelbock outside your brewery.
Speaker:Oh, there you go.
Speaker:That would otherwise freeze.
Speaker:And then if you had to save it, you would pull the, you have to whatever, it didn't freeze off and create an ice B in the process.
Speaker:None of that was planned.
Speaker:Anyway, I digress.
Speaker:I digress.
Speaker:That's a great accident though.
Speaker:It happens every year accidentally.
Speaker:But I will be brewing it.
Speaker:One, once I get that there's only one fermentor I can put it in and uh, once that one becomes free, I am gonna brew it again.
Speaker:The interesting thing about that, and I kind of forgot about it, uh, I, I wanted to have con not control, but I wanted somebody else that knows a lot more than I do have this yeast somewhere to kind of protect it and save it.
Speaker:'cause I don't know what's gonna happen with it, where I go with it.
Speaker:And I had started contacting places to see if they would bank the yeast for me, and it just so happened that my sales rep, I used Lale Mon for almost all my yeast, and my sales rep had come in and I don't, I had asked her about yeast banking and she asked me about the yeast.
Speaker:I told her the story behind it.
Speaker:Well, she ended up telling the main r and d guy of Lamond and Quebec and he contacted me and he said, I love this story.
Speaker:I need to get this yeast.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:and they're international?
Speaker:Wallons?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, global, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I ended up sending him the yeast on it and I got a little nervous 'cause that's when there was, there were strikes in Canada for the postal service there, Royal Mail, and I ended up having to ship it to a different state in Wisconsin before or in the United States before they could ship it up there.
Speaker:He got it.
Speaker:I just talked to him.
Speaker:A week or two ago, they've gotten it down to, there are 16 isolates in the yeast, which means I did not get it down to a single cell.
Speaker:But there are 16 isolates and he has sent it off for genetic testing.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:Which he very much did not need to do, so I can't wait to find out.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What the results of that are.
Speaker:Have there been any other examples that you know of, of like people in Wisconsin using native yeast?
Speaker:Yes, and that actually is what got me started on, uh, streaking and um, building up yeast and stuff like that.
Speaker:Uh, Lakefront did a beer called Wisconsinite and I can't remember who did they work with?
Speaker:Was it um, White Labs or a University?
Speaker:It wasn't, uh, I can't remember.
Speaker:University
Speaker:of Wisconsin was it?
Speaker:It might've been
Speaker:because I'm feeling like this might be the collaboration I'm talking about that I did at Lawrence University
Speaker:with, oh, I bet you it was
Speaker:University of Wisconsin.
Speaker:I think there's a, there's a triangle here.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I still have a bottle of the original.
Speaker:The beer's different now.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But it was one of those where they, they wanted to have, I. Uh, Wisconsin, everything in that beer and that included yeast and yeah, I bet you that was the one.
Speaker:It sounds
Speaker:very familiar.
Speaker:Either that or there was a, uh, goose Island one that Okay.
Speaker:A similar ilk.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But they must not have filtered it 'cause there was a little bit on the bottom of that bottle and I was able to build that up and that's what kind of started me and that had a little bit of that ness to it too.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, so yeah, I know Lakefront has, I'm not sure about other.
Speaker:The breweries that have done it.
Speaker:Yeah, we should do that at some point.
Speaker:Add that to the list.
Speaker:Gary, add the list.
Speaker:I
Speaker:mean, well it, it seems like it's not easy to do from what you described.
Speaker:It's not No.
Speaker:That you can collect the yeast and the odds of you getting one that will actually work well in a beer.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:'cause I've had a lot of failures before that one.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And one thing I want to try is that the guy that I got the information from.
Speaker:For harvesting the yeast in the first place.
Speaker:Whenever he would brew, he would put a Weber grill cover over the top of his kettle, and that became his fermentor.
Speaker:So he never added yeast, he just let it go sitting outside.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah, and I thought that was kind of interesting.
Speaker:I, I never, I've never done it or,
Speaker:mm-hmm.
Speaker:And I'm making notes over here about like, what, what's the difference between all this and like, open fermentation, cool ships, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That it's all related.
Speaker:I mean, really it's all mm-hmm.
Speaker:About the same.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, we've talked a lot about yeast on the show, but we should probably get Allison on to like really do a deep dive into a lot of this stuff because, well,
Speaker:The chemistry is one thing, but the biology's another, so I think we need to get a biologist on here.
Speaker:Somebody that can, can get really deep into that.
Speaker:Well, I know UWO has a whole program.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:For that.
Speaker:I don't know if, uh, Lawrence does.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And also Steven's Point has a, oh, a brewing extension or brewing program.
Speaker:Yeah, I've talked to her.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So she's gonna be able to bring what's her name?
Speaker:We need to, yep.
Speaker:We'll edit that in.
Speaker:It's on the tip of my tongue.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We'll be there.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's another good guess we could get on here at some point.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:She's really sharp.
Speaker:She's really good.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker:What else?
Speaker:This is, I mean, I, we could take this 20 ways, but.
Speaker:The east thing was really interesting.
Speaker:I didn't, I didn't know about that.
Speaker:That was the whole point.
Speaker:I, I thought at some point I'd like to get a hold of it.
Speaker:Will it be commercialized?
Speaker:Will, will it be available to purchase or
Speaker:I kind of wanna wait until I find out what that genetic.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Once they isolate and figure out which one is which,
Speaker:well, and I'm, I'm a little terrified that it has diastatic is in it.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I've got no,
Speaker:So, so for people that don't know, diastatic has the enzyme that can cleave.
Speaker:Let's sort of this limit, this, this branch point in, in all, in the, uh, you wanna describe that?
Speaker:You, you may have, you
Speaker:can probably describe it better than me.
Speaker:I just know it's, it's not good and it's very, very difficult to get rid of if you have it,
Speaker:Basically your, your beers turn out to be like way drier than you intend.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And they'll keep fermenting once they're in whatever package you put 'em in.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And they'll, and your bottles can actually explode.
Speaker:Or Right.
Speaker:At the very least, they'll foam up like a volcano when you open them.
Speaker:So it's, it's, it's, it goes from embarrassment to legal issue.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So you want to keep that outta your brewery.
Speaker:For sure.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I, I've been a little nervous about that.
Speaker:Um, I haven't gotten any hint of any of that being in it.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I think I'm all right.
Speaker:Do you know who Jeremy Clarkson is?
Speaker:No, he's the British guy.
Speaker:He does the, the car, uh, he did top gear.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:He's also the host of Who wants to be a Millionaire on in the uk.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So he bought a farm.
Speaker:And he started growing stuff and he bottled his own beer and it started exploding after it was bottled and they had to recall everything.
Speaker:Think that something like that is probably what happened.
Speaker:It
Speaker:sounds like it's Well, could well be.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:When we buy beer or buy yeast these days, it will say whether it's dias static positive, right.
Speaker:Which I'm kind
Speaker:of surprised how many are.
Speaker:There are a lot that are, yeah.
Speaker:A lot of the Belgian ones are.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So anytime you do a Belgian, it's going to, it probably will be dias static positive.
Speaker:But I, I found out that the, um, so there's a, a, a website you can go to called Bootleg Biology.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that's where you went.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And this is how this all came to be?
Speaker:Or sort of Okay.
Speaker:I ended up buying the kit.
Speaker:I didn't use it 'cause I realized I have all this stuff anyway.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And like the inoculation loop is a paperclip, which is fine.
Speaker:But I had an actual inoculation loop.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But I, I, in preparation of this, I, I looked up their site again and they offer banking services.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And you can buy pitches that are smaller.
Speaker:'cause I found like Lale mon, they, it's a monthly fee.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like, I, I don't wanna pay rent on the East and then Omega does, there are companies that do it, but I would have to buy such a large pitch of it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I don't know that I would sell enough of the beer.
Speaker:To justify the purchase of that larger pitch.
Speaker:Right, right.
Speaker:So the bootleg biology, you can buy, like, you can get Jester King's strain from them.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:They, they have all these other strains that people have, have sent in, but they also offer private banking and you can buy much smaller pitches.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So I had just contacted them today, so I'm hoping that I, I feel like that'll open up more opportunities for me to use it because I have this limited amount.
Speaker:I don't want to have too many generations of it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Beyond where it's at right now.
Speaker:Private banking sounds like there's some sort of illicit Swiss bank for yeast, or you have a number to count.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Alright, well why don't we wrap it up.
Speaker:We've been talking a while.
Speaker:And that concludes this episode of Respecting the Beer.
Speaker:The producer respecting the beer is David Kau.
Speaker:Without David, there would be no show.
Speaker:Make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode.
Speaker:And join the Facebook group to get updates between episodes and join the show over on Patreon where you can hear all the bits that got edited out.
Speaker:Links to both of these are in the show notes.
Speaker:And until next time, please remember to respect the beer.
