Cultivating wild yeast from local honey

argyle · 12-21-2011, 04:40 AM

After reading through many of the pages of the sticky:"How to capture wild yeast," I became interested in cultivating some local yeast.

I want to get yeast from some unpasteurized honey, but haven't found any threads on cultivating yeast from honey.

I have honey from a local farm and I want to cultivate some yeast that are in the honey. I have general idea of how to do it, but I'd like some suggestions.

Here is what I have planned:

1. Make a quart of starter about 1.020 s.g.
2. Dissolve a couple tablespoons of honey to cooled starter
3. Leave starter at room temperature w/air lock
4. Shake every time I pass the container
5. Wait a day or two or three for activity.

Does this look right, or is there a better way to do this?

Another question - Is it likely that I will also get bacterial growth from the honey too?

Have your tried this and what were the results? Is this worth a shot?

Thanks

ReverseApacheMaster · 12-21-2011, 02:44 PM

You can cultivate yeast from honey. The yeast in honey is a different variety from the saccharomyces we normally use to brew but it will definitely ferment beer.

Because honey has almost no water content it should have little or no bacteria present.

bknifefight · 12-21-2011, 03:39 PM

Honey is naturally antiseptic so there should be no bacteria in it. I wouldnt think any yeast in it would be able to convert sugars to alcohol or all honey that sat around long enough would turn boozy, right?

theredben · 12-21-2011, 05:17 PM

Actually, there will likely be a lot of bacteria in the honey. Concentrated honey will not kill the bacteria, it will just inhibit the growth of it (assuming you are not using pasteurized honey, which would defeat the whole point of this project). As soon as you dilute the honey into your starter wort, you will allow the bacteria to start multiplying again.

Whether or not you will get any yeast out of the honey is hard to say, but the only way to know for sure is to try it out! To ensure that you have a pure colony of yeast, the only way is to use solid growth media (agar+petri dishes).

JacobS · 12-21-2011, 05:31 PM

By diluting the honey with water you will adjust the sugar contain and PH so that i will ferment. Yes there are natural yeasts and bacteria in unpasteurized honey, mostly dormant though due to above mentioned antiseptic properties ad lack of water content.

Best bet is to take your starter after you get fermentation started and streak a few plates so that you can be sure you are culturing a yeast of some sort and not just lacto, or similar.

Also these will be wild yeasts and most likely either Schizosaccharomycetes or Zygosaccharomycetes or Brett

LouisvilleBrews · 12-21-2011, 05:34 PM

My first thought is that it wont be super attenuative, but this is a cool idea. maybe even as a second yeast to finish a beer?

argyle · 12-22-2011, 03:45 AM

This seems a bit daunting, especially after learning that I may not get the right types yeasts from the honey.

If I dissolve a little piece camden tablet (Potassium metabisulfite) in the starter, will this inhibit the growth of the bacteria and yeast species other than Saccharomyces cerevisiae? Will Saccharomyces cerevisiae be inhibited also?

How do the people who make beer from wild yeast know that they have Saccharomyces cerevisiae and not some other kind of simple sugar eating yeast like Schizosaccharomycetes or Zygosaccharomycetes (as mentioned in a previous previous reply)?

Still it's worth a try... I figure if I make a starter and use what ever i get from that it a one gallon batch... taste it.... maybe i'll be surprised... though I doubt it. Just so it doesn't kill me

.

If I use this yeast over and over and over again, will a dominant strain eventually take over?

ReverseApacheMaster · 12-22-2011, 03:15 PM

You never really know what you have unless you have the equipment to get a really good look and know what to look for (or send it to a lab). If you get something like zygosaccharomyces it will still ferment your beer. You still get beer and it will taste like beer. I wouldn't be too concerned about what strain you get, just what flavors it produces. Some wild strains are surprisingly neutral while others have good or bad flavor components.

I wouldn't add camden because it will prevent cell growth, which is exactly what you need in a starter. Instead, accept that what you get will not be a pure strain. You'll inevitably get multiple yeast strains and many some bacteria. Over time brewing with the same culture it's possible you'll get a dominant strain or two and you may like the results better (or worse). Some of the bacteria may outpace the yeast. Like reusing any cake or yeast washing, eventually you get free range bacteria and wild yeast so overtime you're bound to get some changes in the flavor. You can acid wash the yeast to knock out bacteria and possibly some wild yeast strains to get a more clean culture but I think that takes half the fun out of brewing from the wild.

El_Exorcisto · 12-28-2011, 04:52 PM

I've done a spontaneous fermentation from honey, and it worked out AWESOME. Skip the campden, the whole point is to get a bloom of all the microbes in the honey. It doesn't matter what genus and species of yeast you start as long as it makes beer that tastes good. Hefe is made with Saccharomyces delbrueckii. Lagers are made with Saccharomyces carlsbergensis. Do it and worry about problems when they happen. Trying to clean up a wild fermentation is like trying to put a 4 cylinder in a 57 Vette, it just ain't right.

statseeker · 01-04-2012, 10:15 AM

I agree with the exorcist. I got some yeast and bacteria from wild grapes and fermented a saison with some of that and a mix of 3724 and could not have been happier with the results once I added some brett C to secondary for about 4 months. Very complex and delicious. The only sad part was that I had to dump the yeast cake after kegging so I could move with all my stuff.