Howto: Capture Wild Yeast

[TravelingLight]

I need some advice/guidance before I embark on my first wild yeast wrangling journey.

I want to catch it from my yard. I don't have any fruit trees/plants, but I do have plenty of bloom producing plants (e.g., camellia, and some other bullspit idk what it is). So I plan on using flowers/blooms from these. I've got about three that have suitable blooms on them now, so I'll do three separate vessels to maximize my chances of success.

Here's my plan and where I need some advice...

(1) Make some low OG wort (~1.020) and divide it between three pint mason jars.

(2) Pluck a few good looking blooms from the bushes and deposit into each mason jar.

(3) Cap the jars with the caps, and set to the side. Open/burp the jars every 24 hours or so.

I guess my question is, should I seal the jars with the mason jar lids or (somehow) rig up an air lock on it?
I guess my final questions are what next? I haven't determined how long I should leave them out, when I should determine which are good and which are bad, when to step them up, etc etc. I've been reading about it but I see so many different methods that I get overwhelmed and just give up researching. Thanks.

 

[Beerswimmer]

I tried this about a year ago and only grew mold. Time to try again. I picked a few different flowers in a field and put them each into jars with lightly hopped wort(last year I didn't hop), a chunk of spruce sap, and put a few jars out around my house. We'll see what happens in about 36hrs or so.....

 

[Azurel]

This past weekend we brewed a Citra/mosaic IPA at my parents Saturday ....I took about 2 gallons and boiled it separately added about .06oz of mosaic hops....Once done I took it outside to cool in her shed since it was raining....I couldn't check it the next day (Sunday)...So this past Monday she took it out of the shed and put in her flower garden....Temps were low mid 50s and quite windy...Tuesday I was finally able to go check on it....I pulled the double muslin bags off the small SS pan and the wort was already starting to ferment...So I transferred to a gallon carboy with double airlock....

Here is a picture...

 

[BrianK3721]

This might be a silly question but does wild yeast more resemble liquid yeast or dry yeast in the fact that it retains more if the flavor compounds?

 

[kh54s10]

My first try at this developed a layer of mold over the top. I scooped it off and it didn't smell bad. The mold came back and the smell was disgusting so I dumped it.

I just made a small wort and dropped in a rose. It was clean since it rained last nite. Hoping!

That second one made a very fruity beer. It was like drinking punch. It was not great but I drank it all.

I have a Centennial SMaSH cold crashing now that I got yeast by dunking a Hibiscus flower in a starter wort. The FG sample tasted pretty good. It Fermented from 1.052 to 1.013 but was pretty cloudy.

 

[RPh_Guy]

This might be a silly question but does wild yeast more resemble liquid yeast or dry yeast in the fact that it retains more if the flavor compounds?

Yeast flavor is dependent on the species & strain (and fermentation temperature, pitch rate, nutrient availability, etc), not the packaging method.

Wild yeast is completely unpredictable and you probably end up with a mix of different organisms.

 

[BrianK3721]

Yeast flavor is dependent on the species & strain (and fermentation temperature, pitch rate, nutrient availability, etc), not the packaging method.

Wild yeast is completely unpredictable and you probably end up with a mix of different organisms.

 

[RPh_Guy]

video

@ 25-29 minutes he says exactly what I said.

@ around 41 minutes he says dry yeast produces less flavor. OK, so maybe that's true. It might explain why we don't have as much variety of dried yeast. But personally I'd like to see some published data before I take the word of the guy selling liquid yeast.