THIS WAS OUR first attempt at using our own wild yeast in a beer. And our first attempt at a fruit beer. We took our lead from information we found in the excellent book The Homebrewer’s Garden. At this point, we had no idea what exactly we were dealing with in our yeast — it was wild, all right, but beyond that we knew nothing.

The Belgians brew a number of fruit beers, notably what is called Kriek (made from cherries), using lambic yeast — a fancy way of saying whatever drifts in. Because we weren’t sure what was going to happen, or indeed if anything was going to happen, we kept the recipe for this one very simple — just malt extract and only one kind of hop, the Cascade hops we had grown, and just two infusions. In contrast, Belgian lambics usually contain a fair whack of malted wheat, and they use hops that have been sitting around for years, which gives them a “cheesy” odor. (Dirty feet, cheesy, barnyard — for someone who hasn’t tasted them, it is difficult to imagine why people would drink Belgian beer, let alone be fanatic about it.)

If you can’t lay your hands on wild yeast, any conventional ale yeast would probably do the job. That would give you a fruit beer, all right, but not the proper sour taste that a wild yeast would. The estimable White Labs in California produce two types of Brettanomyces for home use that you can order from better brewery supply places. Or you can just put this beer outside, uncovered, for a day or so and see what happens.

GRAIN BILL

2.6 lbs Malt extract

0.5 lbs Malted wheat

2 lbs Fruit (cherries and rhubarb)

6 oz Dextrose

4 oz Maple syrup

(Total 5 lbs 11.6 oz)

HOPS BILL

0.3 oz Cascade (60 minutes)

0.3 oz Cascade (0 minutes)

YEAST

About 6 oz of starter (our wild yeast)

OG: 1.065

FG: 1.022

Method: Heat 0.5 U.S. gallons of water to 170 degrees Fahrenheit. Add crushed wheat and steep for 30 minutes. Sparge at 168 degrees Fahrenheit, bringing volume up to 0.8 gallons. Add malt extract, dextrose, syrup and water to make 1.8 gallons. Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops as indicated. Remove from heat. Bring the total volume to 1.5 gallons. Strain. Cool to 70 degrees Fahrenheit and pitch yeast. When ready to transfer to secondary fermenter, stew fruit in 160 degrees Fahrenheit water for 15 minutes and cool. Add it to secondary and rack wort onto it. Be patient, be very patient.