We brewed this grisette (wheat-based farmhouse ale) with Ohio wheat and barley, and Czech Saaz hops. The name “Wild Gift” refers to the yeast that we used for this beer: we “captured” it from the outdoor space at the brewery. This was our first ten barrel batch of beer using this gift of a yeast.

We succesfully isolated a saison-like Sachromyces strain by leaving out four small buckets of wort in different areas overnight, and then fermenting these samples in half-gallon glass jugs with airlocks on them. After a few generations of fermentations, we combined three of the jugs and threw out the fourth, which wasn’t doing much of anything. The flavors were actually tasting pretty nice and saison-like, so we sent the sample in for analysis. We thought we would pick up a mixed fermentation, but we somehow came up with a clean ale strain. To take it one step further, we DNA tested this yeast against our house saison strain, to make sure we hadn’t accidentally cultured up our house yeast. They were conclusively different, so we feel pretty certain that we got a local one.