Anyone have any techniques for catching wild yeast? I was thinking of grabbing some grapes from my parents Frontenac vine & dropping them into some starter wort.
That will work. Grape skins are covered in yeast. That’s the whitish powdery coating you see on them.
Funny you mention it. I’m brewing a pale tomorrow with captured yeast. I grew it up and made a one gallon beer with it earlier this year I now have enough for a five gallon batch. Here is what I did. In the spring when the air smelled good I made some starter wort and put it in a mason jar covered with cheese cloth. Let it sit out on the porch rail downwind of the orchard for three nights and then put in an airlock and let it work on the wort. Built it up a little and then saved a gallon of wort from an IPA and pitched it. Fermented pretty low. Tasted good so I saved it in the fridge. Made a starter from it yesterday and going to pitch it to a lite session tomorrow .
If you are looking to capture from a single source (such as a specific fruit) your best bet will be swabbing or placing the fruit in a small starter wort. If you are looking to capture from an area your best bet will be creating a wild yeast starter jar. covered with cheese cloth. Then plate your yeast and try to isolate it into single colonies. Once you have a desirable colony isolated you can grow from there.
