Three hours of sours

Today, I taste-tested 75 experimental beers as part of my job at Wild Pitch Yeast. That might sound great, but it was a 9 AM to 12 PM marathon. This batch of trial beers included a few wild Saccharomyces spp. fermentations, but it was mostly beers made with other organisms: Schizosaccharomyces pombe, S. japonicus, Hanseniaspora uvarum, H. vinae, H. opuntiae, H. valbyensis, Wickerhamomyces anomalus, and Brettanomyces bruxellensis.

Unsurprisingly, many of the H. uvarum beers tasted the same, many of the S. pombe beers tasted the same, etc. If you ferment with two strains of the same species, the beers should be similar, right? Usually, that's not the case though, even with beer made with the common ale yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. English ales, German ales, and Belgian ales all taste different, in part, due to the different strains of S. cerevisiae used in their fermentations.

Anyway, the delicious surprises of the day were the "oddballs" that didn't taste like all of the others (mostly neutral strains today). One of the W. anomalus beers was tart and refreshing. Similarly, one of the Brett brux beers was an interesting combination of citrus, mint, and mild vinegar flavors. In other words, the best beers of the day were both sours!

Why did these two strains make sour beers when the other 20 W. anomalus and 2 Brett brux strains make something different? Everything was from the same batch of wort, the cells were pitched at similar densities, and the fermentation temperatures and times were identical. The differences must be in the genetics of the two tasty strains relative to their other wild cousins. If we knew enough about the science (genomics, chemistry, etc.) behind sour beers, we might be able to find these needles in the haystack without brewing 75 beers and hoping for the best.

That's why Jeff and I are proposing to follow and map the microbiome in a sour mash from base grain to soured wort. If we know enough about the players involved, how that cast of microbes changes over time, and the organic acids produced, Blue Owl Brewing can better control and predict their fermentations, and the world will get better quality, more consistent sour beer from Blue Owl and all of their sour peers in the craft beer community.

Let's fund this thing and tame the beast!