Collecting Yeast from Home Grown Hops?

[Monk_Faced]

Hello!

I've been scouring through these forums for a couple of days now and y'all got me really excited about trying to grow my own yeasties. I've been reading that a good place to find yeast is off of local fruit, so I was wondering if it would be possible to try and find them on home grown hops.

I plan on growing some hops soon and figure that by the time i get a harvest I'll be at a skill level, brewing wise, to try and make a lambic/sour. Thanks for all of the great info shared here. You guys rock!

 

[sweetcell]

i might be wrong, but i don't think that hops are the best for wild yeast capture.

yeast are looking for sugar, that's why they're hanging out on fruit. hops don't produce much sugar.

by this logic (which may well be flawed), hops aren't a bad place to look for yeast... but it's no better than anywhere else.

then again, supposedly big old maple and oaks trees are decent spots for gathering wild yeast so take the above with a grain of salt.

 

[Monk_Faced]

That makes perfect sense. I might give it a try someday w/o high expectations. I look forward to having a home grown beer one day. Now if I only had a field to grow barley in.
Thanks for the help!

 

[ShackNasty]

I have had luck capturing wild yeast from the bark of grape vines. I got a pretty funky collection from a grape vine at my old house, and just recently added some grape vine bark from an old church in New Mexico to some wort. It's been 24 hours and there a few minimal signs of fermentation.

I have heard the riper the fruit the better. I also threw a couple over ripe crab apples in some wort. Still waiting to see signs in that concoction.

 

[Warthaug]

Hops are worth a try - while yeasts will thrive on sugar sources, they get get by when they land on things less favourable. I'm in the middle of a capture project which is purifying yeast off of of 2-row malt. My blog post on it is in progress, but I posted a few pictures from this upcoming post on another thread here at HBT.

Bit of shameless self-promotion - all my wild-yeast harvesting stuff can be found here.

Bryan