Wild Yeast

[Hamish Jones]

Has anyone attempted to harvest wild yeast for beer production, would be interested to know what the results were if anyone has given it a crack

[Mark]

Tried it with yeast from the skins of home-grown plums in a fruit wine I made. The process was relatively simple - I crushed the fruit and left it on a pot (lid on) on a heating pad for a day or two. The wild yeast took off, I pitched the entire fermenting mass into wort. You want to make sure the fruit mix is quite acidic (use citric acid) as it inhibits unpleasant yeast. Higher alcohol levels also kill nasty wild yeasts, so maybe aim for a higher grav beer. The wild yeast is basically the whitish film you see on fruit, make sure you avoid using anything with any sign of mould on it!!

I have to say the taste wasn't amazing, but it did ferment out successfully, and had no really bad flavours you might associate with infection etc. Possibly the beer wasn't brilliantly made, and I included the stones from the fruit which added an unusual flavour.

I've never tried harvesting from open fermentation though, not sure the best way to do that. I kinda learned the fruit way from my brother who's a wine maker.

[Hamish Jones]

I was kind of thinking about harvesting from different fruits and maybe around different types of trees to hopefully get the character of the plant sort of thing in the yeast profile, not sure if it has any bearing but thought it might be a possibility to try out whether it had any bearing on the yeast flavours, I may be over thinking it though

[Mark]

Yeah I had an idea of putting an open fermenter in the native bush somewhere to see what would happen. It's unlikely to taste better than commercial yeast but might be an interesting experiment.