Just for fun, I’m going to try harvesting some wild yeast for mead and beer. Does anybody here do that? My question is: the guides I see say to create your starter by making wort with DME. But is there any reason I can’t use malt instead?
Well lets be specific… Malt, DME is dried MALT extract… So when you say malt… the stuff they make malted milk with? Just trying to get an understanding so there can be help… Sneezles61
I always thought you just made a starter just like any other, poured it in a mason jar(s), covered it with cheese cloth and put the jar(s) outside. Never tried it though. With my luck it would be a recipe for disaster.
@porkchop is our resident funk expert. Hopefully he will check in.
I think you are on the right path hd4mark… I think then too it depends where you place them too… In the yard could yield lacto, or ,place you collector in fruit trees where the possibility to collect wild yeast is better… Sneezles61
No, when I say malt, I mean malted barley. I know that’s where DME comes from of course, which is why it seems like you should just be able to use that instead of DME.
As for where to leave the jar, I have read that organic ingredients (honey, fruit) has yeast on it already. Making a starter with honey, for example, I read that you just have to mix it up and wait. Same for making a bread starter. Wouldn’t that also work with malted barley? Or has the malting process eliminated whatever yeast might have been there?
This is how I’ve done it. Left it overnight. Upwind of my orchard. I’ve read if you leave it longer you will start to collect nasties. I used a mason jar covered with cheese cloth in the morning I put a cover on it that I had drilled in a stopper for an airlock. Just built it up from there like a regular starter. Brewed a 1 gallon test batch and it tasted good do repitched it a couple times to 5 gallon n batches. It attenuated really well so used it for saisons
Back in the sixties - #49 by brew_cat hey I dug up this old post I started that talks about how I harvested the yeast
