Brewing with wild yeast in honey?
Wu Dao Long asked:
I am interested in trying a Ginger Wine (of sorts) brewing experiment using spontaneous fermentation with the wild yeast contained in honey, and I want to know if this is doomed to failure from the outset and are there any serious health hazzards involved.
I am interested in trying a Ginger Wine (of sorts) brewing experiment using spontaneous fermentation with the wild yeast contained in honey, and I want to know if this is doomed to failure from the outset and are there any serious health hazzards involved.
Here’s my plan,
1) Boil ginger to make a significant quantity of ginger tea.
2) Use the ginger tea to cook rice – high volume of tea vs rice.
3) Strain off the grains and allow to the soup to cool to a moderately warm temperature.
4) Add natural/organic unprocessed honey to the ginger rice soup and possibly extra sugar.
5) Put the mixture in a bottle and shake to aerate.
6) Add an air lock to the bottle and leave it to sit in a warm place for a long time.
I have read that some solid honeys contain inactive yeasts which can be seen a little active by the bubbles around the edges. These become active when the honey is diluted.
Hopefully there will be sufficient Saccharomyces cerevisiae present in the mix to brew completely.
IVI
FISHER
You are better off adding a cultured yeast instead of relying on the possibility of the wild yeasts being either present or plentiful enough to actually propagate and not be taken over by any other microorganisms. When you add yeast instead of taking a chance on wild yeast you ensure the yeast takes over and will give you predictable and desirable results. Waiting to see if the wild yeast is even present, much less prolific is a long shot and does leave a lot of room for other potential infections. On top of that, honey takes longer to ferment than other sugars so it will be a lot longer into the process before you will find out if you’ve wasted your time and ingredients or not.
Stick with a good wine yeast or Champagne yeast if you’re shooting for a drier finish or higher final alcohol yield.
MAEL
No serious health concerns from your ingredients or processing contained here. Is it doomed? Well, it does not look good for several reasons low cell count, low fermentables due to pour starch convertion, and poor flavor profile.
1. The following site covers research on the microbiology of honey. In the discussion section find the results of the microbiology of the honey. Which contains some bacteria and very little yeast. At best you will get a bacterial fermentation which will produce and impart acid to your beer making it sour. In addition the low cell count will result in a slow lag phase (onset) to fermentation contbibuting to risk of undesirable contaminates.
While many wild yeast strain including wild strains of S. cerevisiae and S. uvarum will contuct fermentation as normally expected the results will vary.
It is advised that you use a selected cultured yeast for your fermentation.
2. Low Fermentables:
In brewing applications including Sake (a beer), fermentables (starch) are derived from grains. The starches are degraded (converted) to fermentable sugars through enzamatic activity. In the brewing of the lighter American Pilsners a portion, as much as 40%, of fermentables are derived from rice. Rice contains no (weak) enzymes capable of converting it’s starch to fermentable froms. Therefore, the brewers gelatinizes the starch by cooking (boiling) it and adding it to the barley mash. The enzymes in the barley are able to convert to rice starches to fermentable sugars. In your recipe you do gellatinze your rice by boiling it but you do not have an enzyme to convert the starches to fermentables. In Sake (a Beer) brewing an enzymatic agent is added to the mash to get the desirable conversions.
Since you lack (in your processing) the sugars desired and required for ethanol production your attempt at a beer will lack those items in any apprecitable amount. However, your beer may get a low level fermentation from the small amount of wild yeast and bacteria in the honey.
3. The wild yeast and bacteria will in time give some degree of fermentation, however, the flavors they produce are undesirable. These yeast have not been choosen for brewing due to their poor/unpredictable fermentations and poor flavor profile. Bacteria are much the same and the ones that are most active in such brews produce acids that sour the beer. In addition, neither will produce the desired sweet aromatic esters that other selected fermenters will.
In the end I recommend you get a cultured yeast and figure a way to convert the rice starches to convertables. One way for conversion is to combine the boiled/gelantized rice starch with a portion of malted barley. The barley contains the enzymes to convert the rice starches to fermentable sugars. Allow 25-45 minutes for the conversion at 155F. Strain and pour hot water (sparge) the garin mixture gently.
Look for the above items at a local homebrewing shop or from an online source.
Good luck and enjoy.
Shoot me an email if you have any questions.