28C Wild Specialty Beer
Wild Sour Collab (5 Magics)
OG1.048Grain bill
| Gladfield Pilsner Malt | 2.5 kg | 50% |
| Gladfield Wheat Malt | 2.5 kg | 50% |
Adjuncts
| Whirlfloc | 1 tablet @ 10 min |
| Yeast Nutrient | 4 g @ 10 min |
Hop schedule
| Hop | 60 min |
|---|---|
| Pacific Gem | 10g |
Yeast
| Paul Fantham's 5 Magics culture (2nd generation trub) | Pitched onto an existing wild trub at Paul Fantham's house |
Water additions
| Calcium Chloride | 1.5 g |
Tasting notes
About This Beer
A 50/50 Pilsner and wheat gueuze-style base, brewed 6 January 2026 with Jamie Rickard and pitched onto Paul Fantham’s existing wild trub at Paul’s place.
That trub is part of the 5 Magics lineage. Paul had already brewed one batch on the original slurry, so the combined 40 litres of identical wort became the second-generation pitch on that yeast bed.
Just enough bittering from a single small Pacific Gem charge to discourage spoilage without inhibiting the wild organisms.
Brew day was the first of two parallel brews on this base. The second, five days later, went onto a house culture built from bottle dregs. Same wort, different cultures, and the comparison is the point of running both.
Pitched 15 January
Matt’s 22.5 L cube and Jamie’s matching cube were both no-chilled, then combined and pitched onto the trub in a 50 L all-rounder.
It fermented much faster than expected. Primary was effectively complete within a couple of weeks, with conditioning through to mid-February.
A second-generation wild trub is a very different beast to a freshly stepped-up dregs culture. The same wort on the house culture was still going months later, and had barely moved on acid at the point this one was already packaged.
Kegged 21 February
The 40 litres split into a full 19 L keg each. Matt’s has been stored cold with a tap fitted, aging and being tasted in parallel.
Tasting good and developing well, with a clean lactic sourness and a final pH around 3.0 to 3.3 when last sampled.
Where the culture went
Paul has since brewed a third-generation batch on the same trub, then combined that yeast bed with whole organic muscat grapes to seed a new mixed culture, now called Sixth Magic, the five with the grapes folded in as a sixth. He split it into two jars and gave one to Matt.
That went into Sixth Magic and has since been carried forward again into Second Sight.
Lineage
- Generation 1: Paul Fantham’s original 5 Magics slurry
- Generation 2: this brew, Matt and Jamie’s 40 L co-pitch
- Generation 3: Paul’s solo brew on the Gen 2 trub
- Spinoff: Sixth Magic, the grape-augmented culture pitched into one cube of the foeder pale sour wort
- Carried forward: Second Sight, the second generation grown on Sixth Magic
- Parallel sibling on the house culture: House Wild Sour