In the beginning, there was fire. Fast forward many years, and there is still fire. And I personally like harnessing the power of fire for cooking, warmth, beauty and sundry other purposes. I especially like harnessing fire in the form of rapidly oxidizing wood.
To that end, I began foraging firewood in my local park. Fallen dead branches, etc. On one occasion, while foraging firewood, I found a particularly dry, cracked and weathered log (this detail will be significant later), and it was beautiful to boot. Gnarled and twisted, much like a piece of driftwood. I took it home with the intent to burn it, but as I considered it, I thought, "This log is too beautiful to burn. Perhaps I'll make a decorative piece out of it. Lacquer it or something." So, I left it in my backyard for months, awaiting that time when I found time to process it.
During this period, my interest in brewing with wild yeast was also increasing. I would surf the home-brew web looking for stories, tips, tricks, processes." Along the way I came across a snippet of information about how families of antiquity had magic paddles and pieces of wood called "Kveikstokks" that they would use during their brewing process. Or at least paddles that they thought were magic. As it turns out, probably, there were just cultures of yeast living in those paddles, living off of whatever residual sugars were in the paddle. And when they stirred the wort with the paddle, said yeast was mixed into the wort. Sometime later the wort began bubbling up (fermenting) and there was much rejoicing in the village.
My mind went straight to my log. It was weathered and cracked, clearly aged by the elements... and possibly decayed by yeast and bacteria. I thought, "what if I put my log into a batch of beer?" So I did. And it fermented beautifully!
Now, we don't dip the magic log into our beers to ferment them. We sent a sample of the slurry from a batch to Jeff Mello, proprietor and propegator at Bootleg Biology in Nashville Tennessee. Bootleg Biology has help us isolate, sequence and identify a pure culture from the log so that we can use it in commercial brewing. The lab reports show the culture to be Saccharomyces Genus. We could not determine a species level identification. That typically means the cultures are unique enough that they may be new to the science world. It is closely related to S. cerevisiae, though the closest genetic relative looks to be S. paradoxus.
Since this species of Sacch seems to be unidentified heretofore, we've decided to name it S. contriterram. The yeast was foraged in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is an Anglicization of the Dutch "Breuckelen" which some claim translates "Broken Land." "Broken Land" translated to Latin is "Contritum Terram" which we portmanteaued into "Contriterram." Look for our table beer in 16oz. cans come mid-2019. Can you guess which yeast it is fermented with?
The yeast that we use are the great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandbabies of the yeast from the log.
To that end, I began foraging firewood in my local park. Fallen dead branches, etc. On one occasion, while foraging firewood, I found a particularly dry, cracked and weathered log (this detail will be significant later), and it was beautiful to boot. Gnarled and twisted, much like a piece of driftwood. I took it home with the intent to burn it, but as I considered it, I thought, "This log is too beautiful to burn. Perhaps I'll make a decorative piece out of it. Lacquer it or something." So, I left it in my backyard for months, awaiting that time when I found time to process it.
During this period, my interest in brewing with wild yeast was also increasing. I would surf the home-brew web looking for stories, tips, tricks, processes." Along the way I came across a snippet of information about how families of antiquity had magic paddles and pieces of wood called "Kveikstokks" that they would use during their brewing process. Or at least paddles that they thought were magic. As it turns out, probably, there were just cultures of yeast living in those paddles, living off of whatever residual sugars were in the paddle. And when they stirred the wort with the paddle, said yeast was mixed into the wort. Sometime later the wort began bubbling up (fermenting) and there was much rejoicing in the village.
My mind went straight to my log. It was weathered and cracked, clearly aged by the elements... and possibly decayed by yeast and bacteria. I thought, "what if I put my log into a batch of beer?" So I did. And it fermented beautifully!
Now, we don't dip the magic log into our beers to ferment them. We sent a sample of the slurry from a batch to Jeff Mello, proprietor and propegator at Bootleg Biology in Nashville Tennessee. Bootleg Biology has help us isolate, sequence and identify a pure culture from the log so that we can use it in commercial brewing. The lab reports show the culture to be Saccharomyces Genus. We could not determine a species level identification. That typically means the cultures are unique enough that they may be new to the science world. It is closely related to S. cerevisiae, though the closest genetic relative looks to be S. paradoxus.
Since this species of Sacch seems to be unidentified heretofore, we've decided to name it S. contriterram. The yeast was foraged in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is an Anglicization of the Dutch "Breuckelen" which some claim translates "Broken Land." "Broken Land" translated to Latin is "Contritum Terram" which we portmanteaued into "Contriterram." Look for our table beer in 16oz. cans come mid-2019. Can you guess which yeast it is fermented with?
The yeast that we use are the great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandbabies of the yeast from the log.
