BernardSmith
Senior Member
I am interested in experimenting with wild yeasts to ferment my honey meads over the next 12 months. Trying to capture and then propagate yeasts from , for example, plums, from raw honey, from inchet and kitel (gesho), from figs and so forth. *** Just begun to capture these yeasts (since Sunday) and so the colonies I have in mason jars are far too small at the moment to know if they are even viable (though I used a scant pound of raw Brazilian wild flower in a gallon of water for this honey experiment and when I agitate the carboy that this is in I do get a very large amount of gas) . Anyway, is there anyone else on this forum interested in experimenting with wild yeasts rather than lab cultured varieties? Methinks that IF (and that is a very big if ) I can find a viable and tasteful fermenting culture that this might result in quite uniquely flavored meads.
*** There seems to be at least two ways that folk cultivate wild yeasts - one is to work with colonies of yeast as I am. Another more "scientistic" approach (not more scientific IMO, but an approach that has the appearance of being more scientific) is to use petri dishes to isolate and select cultures that you grow on agar and so ensure that you are dealing only with yeast and not a mix of yeast and other bacteria and fungi or mold. This second approach means that you might be able to cultivate very specific strains of yeast the equivalent of 71B or D47 and the like, whereas capturing yeast on the skins of fruit may mean that the colony is made up of a very diverse community of yeast whose make-up may change in light of the amount of sugar and or alcohol and or acidity etc that they are exposed to...
*** There seems to be at least two ways that folk cultivate wild yeasts - one is to work with colonies of yeast as I am. Another more "scientistic" approach (not more scientific IMO, but an approach that has the appearance of being more scientific) is to use petri dishes to isolate and select cultures that you grow on agar and so ensure that you are dealing only with yeast and not a mix of yeast and other bacteria and fungi or mold. This second approach means that you might be able to cultivate very specific strains of yeast the equivalent of 71B or D47 and the like, whereas capturing yeast on the skins of fruit may mean that the colony is made up of a very diverse community of yeast whose make-up may change in light of the amount of sugar and or alcohol and or acidity etc that they are exposed to...