wild yeast wrangling

I know, I know...the chances of this working are admittedly very slim. I just made a pint starter with some extra DME and old hops I had laying around. My plan is to put this out on my balcony with a fine mesh screen over it for a couple of days to see what happens.

Have any of you had something like this actually work? How long should I leave it out? I've read everywhere between one day and two weeks. Does anyone have any advice?

I just left a mason jar with dme out on one occasion and on another with left over wort in the garage no screen because I didn't have to worry about stuff falling in. It's actually guaranteed to work there's so much yeast and other bacteria floating around in the air anyway. The only thing is you won't know how it's going to affect the end product.

Yeah, I know something will grow in there. By "working", I meant getting something worthwhile for brewing. How long did you set it out for? I'm planning on covering it with foil after some time to let whatever's in there grow. Did you get anything you used for subsequent brewing?

I'd leave it out for a day at the most. I did the same thing and left some extra wort out for only a few hours, and successfully captured yeast. (I didn't use any sort of screen on mine, just left it open).

there's a lot of threads about this in the lambic/wild brewing section, you should check them out.