Wild yeast?

Does anybody have much experience with harvesting wild yeast from the great outdoors? On my lunchtime stroll route are plenty of fruit plants, including blackberries & elder. I thought I'd nab some to see what's hanging around.

Added fruits to 300 ml of ~1.030 wort with a couple of hop pellets chucked in to take out the bacteria. Will wait to see what happens. Maybe nowt, maybe mild poisoning, maybe brilliant. Let's see eh?!

Id be interested to hear your experiences/tips

Edit: for info, I'm basing the approach on what I skimmed from here: http://jesterkingbrewery.com/head-brewer-garrett-crowell-on-curating-native-yeast and Method #2 here

God favours the brave, even in brewing! :lol:

I've never relied on wild yeast but I'm pretty sure that my Grandma's Elderberry Wine was definitely open for business.

She'd spread some bread yeast on a slice of toast, float it on top of a pancheon full of elderberry juice, cover it with a tea-towel and then leave it to its own devices in the pantry.

The good news is that nobody died from drinking it! :thumb:

You should plate it first. It's easier to see yeast clusters from bacteria and mold clusters. They won't live close to each other so you can isolate them then take just the yeast off and grow it in a vile. It's not hard just time consuming.

Dutto said:

God favours the brave, even in brewing! :lol:

I've never relied on wild yeast but I'm pretty sure that my Grandma's Elderberry Wine was definitely open for business.

She'd spread some bread yeast on a slice of toast, float it on top of a pancheon full of elderberry juice, cover it with a tea-towel and then leave it to its own devices in the pantry.

The good news is that nobody died from drinking it! :thumb:

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Funnily enough my dad has told a similar story that he used to brew beer with his father in law using the self same method with the toast and tea towel. They also used to do what they called a brew booster just putting another brew over the yeast cake. The malted barley was smashed in the same tea towel with a rolling pin.

Dutto said:

God favours the brave, even in brewing! :lol:

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Let's hope he also pities the foolhardy, eh?!

JapanBrew said:

You should plate it first. It's easier to see yeast clusters from bacteria and mold clusters. They won't live close to each other so you can isolate them then take just the yeast off and grow it in a vile. It's not hard just time consuming.

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Yeah, that might be an option further down the line. For now, I'm intentionally limiting the process just to see if anything useful turns up. If the current pot shows signs of fermentation (and doesn't smell of vomit), then the [loose and as yet not thought out] next step will likely be to transfer the slightly alcoholic goop to a higher gravity (and hopped) wort to sort the wheat from the chaff and favour the yeast likely to do something interesting/useful.

We shall see... :)

<Edit> I'll add a pinch of yeast nutrient to the first 'fermentation' too (forgot to do so last night!

I occasionally make country wines - just wild fruit plus a cup of tea for tannin plus some sugar.
Method is to take 3 to 4 pounds of fruit and pour on about 6 pints of boiling water. Leave it in a sealed FV for a week to extract juices. At this point the fruit is fermenting like crazy which is presumably from wild yeast. I assume the boiling water is hot enough to kill bacteria but not so hot to kill wild yeast.
Rest of the method is then to strain off the fruit, add about 2 1/2 Lbs sugar, make it up to a gallon and add a teaspoonful of dried wine yeast. Don't know why I bother with the latter as the finished wine is obviously fermented by a mixture of wild and wine yeasts. Fermentation takes at least 6 months as wild yeasts ferment to very low FGs, but very slowly.
Final thought - drink in moderation as it'll give you a killer hangover if you don't!

@Cwrw666 very interesting, I'd have thought that 100^C would obliterate pretty much all the bugs. Nature finds a way eh? Thanks for sharing!

drink in moderation as it'll give you a killer hangover if you don't!

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My past experiences with commercial sour and spontanferment beers supports this! :whistle:

geigercntr said:

@Cwrw666 very interesting, I'd have thought that 100^C would obliterate pretty much all the bugs. Nature finds a way eh? Thanks for sharing!

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It would more or less but of course adding 6 pints of 100c water to 4Lb of fruit would result in a big drop of temperature pretty quickly, I'd guess to more like pasteurising temperature which definitely wouldn't kill wild yeast.

By the way, if you've got an FV with a wild yeast `infection' that's affecting your beer - washing out with boiling water (my normal sanitising method) definitely won't get rid of it. Wild yeasts are very resilient.

Cwrw666 said:

It would more or less but of course adding 6 pints of 100c water to 4Lb of fruit would result in a big drop of temperature pretty quickly, I'd guess to more like pasteurising temperature which definitely wouldn't kill wild yeast.

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of course! Obviously left my brain at home today...

By the way, if you've got an FV with a wild yeast `infection' that's affecting your beer - washing out with boiling water (my normal sanitising method) definitely won't get rid of it. Wild yeasts are very resilient.

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Yeah, I've got an old FV approaching retirement age that I've got earmarked for Brett et al. :)

foxy said:

Funnily enough my dad has told a similar story that he used to brew beer with his father in law using the self same method with the toast and tea towel. They also used to do what they called a brew booster just putting another brew over the yeast cake. The malted barley was smashed in the same tea towel with a rolling pin.

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I'm just glad that you said "father in law" ... :thumb:

... nowadays I expect things to start "my great-granddad said"! :whistle:

After 3 days in the wort, I'm getting signs of yeasty/buggy life!

Plus, satisfying pssst on unscrewing!

A north west terroir strain is one step closer

Day 23. Reasonable cake forming on the base. Planning to leave it 30 days to knock out the bad guys (link) before trying a taster. Smells fruity and a little sour. Pleasant overall!