Cultivating wild yeast from local honey

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argyle

argyle

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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
 
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.
 
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?
 
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).
 
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
 
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?
 
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 :cross:.

If I use this yeast over and over and over again, will a dominant strain eventually take over?
 
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.
 
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.
 
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. :(
 
statseeker said:
I agree with the exorcist.
Click to expand...

Laughed out louad at this. Will consider putting on my signature, esp. in honour of you being a big help to me a while back.

I have something else to add, though, and this is just a brainstorm. I feel that the yeast culture that gets strong in your starter will be dependant on the kinds of sugars and nutrients in your starter, so if you make a honey starter (ie 1 part honey:10 parts water) with the yeast dormant in the honey, the yeasts that grow the quickest and dominate will be the ones that like to ferment honey (ie sucrose, fructose, sucrose). Likewise, if you had a wort starter of the same gravity, the wild yeast that dominate it the quickest will be the ones that like to ferment beer (ie maltose sugars).

Therefore, I would imagine that if you wanted to make wild mead, I would use a honey starter, either with the yeast from the honey, or from the yeast in the air coming into a pasteurised starter. If you wanted to make a wild beer, you'd be better off finding a yeast that likes to dominate and ferment wort.

I just feel as though that this method may lead to less disappointment. There might be a great tasting wild yeast that you get from a honey starter that could struggle with maltose, or vice versa: you may culture a yeast from a wort that scratches its dear little head when presented with sucrose. However, this of course may be a good thing if you want a sweet-finishing drink where the yeast only ferments the sugars it grew up with as a baby starter.

Just a few thoughts that occurred to me that might be of use to anyone else.
 
Pith said:
Laughed out louad at this. Will consider putting on my signature, esp. in honour of you being a big help to me a while back.

I have something else to add, though, and this is just a brainstorm. I feel that the yeast culture that gets strong in your starter will be dependant on the kinds of sugars and nutrients in your starter, so if you make a honey starter (ie 1 part honey:10 parts water) with the yeast dormant in the honey, the yeasts that grow the quickest and dominate will be the ones that like to ferment honey (ie sucrose, fructose, sucrose). Likewise, if you had a wort starter of the same gravity, the wild yeast that dominate it the quickest will be the ones that like to ferment beer (ie maltose sugars).

Therefore, I would imagine that if you wanted to make wild mead, I would use a honey starter, either with the yeast from the honey, or from the yeast in the air coming into a pasteurised starter. If you wanted to make a wild beer, you'd be better off finding a yeast that likes to dominate and ferment wort.

I just feel as though that this method may lead to less disappointment. There might be a great tasting wild yeast that you get from a honey starter that could struggle with maltose, or vice versa: you may culture a yeast from a wort that scratches its dear little head when presented with sucrose. However, this of course may be a good thing if you want a sweet-finishing drink where the yeast only ferments the sugars it grew up with as a baby starter.

Just a few thoughts that occurred to me that might be of use to anyone else.
Click to expand...

This actually helped quite a bit. Thank you.

I have an apple tree in the backyard that I'm thinking about using to ferment a small wild yeast batch this summer. We shall see what happens. Lots of research to be done.

BTW, to the OP, any results yet?
 
I tried this over the weekend with some unfiltered, unpasteurized Amish honey. Just two teaspoons in a 2-cup starter.

Within 12 hours there was what I would normally assume was yeast flocced to the bottom of the jug, but no krausen, and no noticeable CO2 production. Then about 36+ hours in, late last night, I finally started to get just the tiniest bit of foam on top of the starter.

I can't wait to get home from work today to see what it's doing now... :-D
 
corwin3083 said:
I tried this over the weekend with some unfiltered, unpasteurized Amish honey. Just two teaspoons in a 2-cup starter.

Within 12 hours there was what I would normally assume was yeast flocced to the bottom of the jug, but no krausen, and no noticeable CO2 production. Then about 36+ hours in, late last night, I finally started to get just the tiniest bit of foam on top of the starter.

I can't wait to get home from work today to see what it's doing now... :-D
Click to expand...

10mL honey in 500mL water isn't very much at all. That's probably why the activity was so small. You could go ahead and give it 2-3 more tablespoons of honey, I reckon. :) You won't know whether you've got something nice until you've aged it for a while and done exactly the same process with a mead yeast you like (sanitize your must before you pitch your mead yeast). Once you're happy with the size and strength of them, put both to age for a while, then try them side by side and let us know!

I'm sure you knew all this already, but better safe than sorry. I'd hate for you to chuck it because it was young and sharp.
 
Cool! Now that they've woken up and started reproducing, I'd add more honey and water, shake the crap out of it, and let 'er rip. :D
 
Anyone produce something drinkable out of this yet? I'm interested in integrating some sort of local funk/flavor into some brews. I'd like to construct a coolship, but this might be another good way to get some local flora & fauna into my beer. I brewed a cream ale last summer with local honey added at the end of the boil and after reading this thread I'm thinking of trying this recipe with a wild fermented twist. Embrace the funk. :rockin:
 
ANything new? I've got a couple recipes I want to try with some wild fermented honey yeast.
 
Well, I did a gallon batch of belgian pale ale, which tasted great, very saison-y, peppery, spicy, right out of the fermenter. It's about two weeks in the bottle at this point.

I also did a 5gal batch of rosemary pale ale, which has been in primary for a week at this point. Smells great, but I haven't tasted it yet. However, the yeast appears to be done, as I can read through this better bottle full of beer; it did its thing, and then flocced hard and fast.
 
Awesome! I have had fairly mundane results isolating yeasts from the environment and from the skins of fruits, so I'll give the honey idea a try.
 

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