Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider

We've got tired of just fermenting standard wort with different yeast strains for comparison, and we are starting full-sized batches of proper styled beer split and inoculated with very similar yet distinct yeast from the same class. The first in line are Belgian wits. Weather permitting it'll be outdoor brews! Hopefully this would be fun experience, will try to post inspirational results here.

And spruce tips are coming soon as well, but not yet. There is ground elder everywhere, but I'm reluctant to give it a try in brewing, need to learn to ferment it with lactic first and see if it is any good to my taste.

Yesterday we've tasted small batches of... some weird yeast caught in some local beer in UK bar, it certainly looks right under microscope, counts to proper population with more or less typical dynamics... and then fails to change the gravity, yet produces quite distinct flavor. 1040 OG beer starters end up too sweet and disgusting, of course, so we've tried instead kombucha-style mix of pale wort and tea, to 1010 OG, sterile, of course. The gravity did not change again, but the flavor! It was not quite like kombucha, but along the lines, and definitely the tea flavor was more distinct that in reference non-inoculated sample, that tasted disgustingly sweet and stale. And somehow this "monoculture combucha" hits in the head. What a weird mutant. Something to research now. Maybe we have a 0% beer magic in our hands?