Armed with sterile test tubes, workers at Big Spruce Brewing set out last year into the berry patches of a Cape Breton farm to track down the missing link in their quest to craft a 100 per cent Nova Scotian beer — wild yeast.

The brewery figured there would be a market for a beer whose components are all produced in the province. The problem, however, is most yeast used in beer making is made in labs, according to Big Spruce alesmith and owner Jeremy White.

That launched the search for a yeast native to the province.

"It's much harder trying to find something wild, that exists native to a piece of land," he said.

Yeasts are a type of fungus that grow wild in nature. Some convert sugars into alcohol and are an essential part of making drinks like beer.

This is how the yeast used in Big Spruce's One Hundred beer looks under a microscope. (Big Spruce Brewing)

The first step for White was a "shotgun approach" where he collected as many samples as possible. Wild yeast feeds on sugar and is naturally attracted to sweet things. White and others headed out onto his farm in Nyanza, near Baddeck, collecting small samples of fruits, berries, flowers and anything else they could find.

Could have collected 'a bunch of nothing'

Fifty samples were sent to a laboratory in Guelph, Ont., to see if they contained any yeast.

Jeremy White is the owner and alesmith for Big Spruce Brewing in Cape Breton. (Nina Corfu/CBC )

"Right there we had no idea what we wanted or were going to get," White said. "We didn't even know if we had yeast. We might have just collected a bunch of bacteria or a bunch of nothing."

Out of the 50 samples only 10 contained yeast. But that didn't mean all could be used for beer. After a series of experiments in the brewery it was determined only three were suitable.

Distinct Belgian flavour

Only two of those yeasts produced beer that actually tasted any good. One made a heavy beer, the other a 4.9 per cent beer that is crisp and dry, with spicy notes.

"It has that distinct Belgian flavour to it and it's entirely because of the yeast," White said. "It almost wouldn't matter what we did with this beer in terms of recipe formulation … so much of this beer's flavour is driven by the wild yeast."

Big Spruce Brewing is located in Nyanza, Cape Breton. (Norma Jean MacPhee/CBC)

Those yeasts are also pure Nova Scotia. White had their DNA tested to make sure they were unique to the province and not imported. Both strains were found on the surface of the wild eastern Canadian pin cherry.

Big Spruce births beer named One Hundred

The lighter beer is called One Hundred, because 100 per cent of its ingredients were produced in Nova Scotia.

Those ingredients include barley from Taproot Farms in Port Williams, rye from Stewart's Organic Farm in Wolfville, along with Golding and Willamette hops from Breton Fields, the farm at Big Spruce.

"It's the first beer in sort of the modern history of beer making in Nova Scotia to be made with 100 per cent Nova Scotian grown, produced ingredients," said White.