Organic apple peel yeast?

[Mojzis]

I think thats where the confusion lies: the idea of an apple specific yeast. Yeast by nature are not specific.

Yeast inhabiting your wild apples isn't necessarily going to produce the profile you are looking for. Your chances of finding this profile is just as good by collecting yeast from your beard, from the leaf of a tree, etc. I'm with you on the sprayed vs not sprayed debate. The same yeast that ferments sugars on the sap of a tree will ferment your bread, your cider or your beer. If it will make a pleasing profile to you is a matter of attempts and hoping you find a pleasing strain/community, not necessarily the surface on which it was found.

 

[BeerLoverHere]

I read the best way to harvest wild yeasts is to pick a few yourself, chop them up and make a starter. If you get a viable yeast and desirable profile then you pitch the starter into your next batch.

Yep, this is what I did when harvesting persimmons from a tree this past fall: Picked the persimmons, placed in clean/sanitized container, chopped up most all the skin from the persimmons on a sanitized cutting board, placed in a growler, made a starter, and added some hops to ward off any bacteria. Worked well

 

[WVMJ]

Of course there are specific yeasts for specific fruits just like there are specific forms of powdery mildew for different fruits, the yeasts adapt to better take advantage of the fruit they evolved with. That is not to say a grape yeast wouldnt work well in an apple ferment, they do, but apple yeasts might not have evolved to ferment the higher levels of sugar in grapes so they might not work well in a grape must. Just like yeast that evolved on wheat also might not be able to fully ferment a grape must since they have never seen such high levels of sugars just as examples. Who knows if anyone has actually searched professionally for an apple cider specific yeast, some are sold as cider yeast but they never seems to be a story about where they came from. WVMJ

I think thats where the confusion lies: the idea of an apple specific yeast. Yeast by nature are not specific.

Yeast inhabiting your wild apples isn't necessarily going to produce the profile you are looking for. Your chances of finding this profile is just as good by collecting yeast from your beard, from the leaf of a tree, etc. I'm with you on the sprayed vs not sprayed debate. The same yeast that ferments sugars on the sap of a tree will ferment your bread, your cider or your beer. If it will make a pleasing profile to you is a matter of attempts and hoping you find a pleasing strain/community, not necessarily the surface on which it was found.

 

[Warthaug]

Of course there are specific yeasts for specific fruits just like there are specific forms of powdery mildew for different fruits, the yeasts adapt to better take advantage of the fruit they evolved with.

If you have evidence of this I'd love to see it, because your claims fly in the face of pretty much all work done analysing Saccharomyces natural niche. There has been a fair amount of work done on wild Saccharomyces yeasts living on sources such as apples (see some of my earlier posts in this thread for some example links) and none of them were able to identify fruit-specific yeasts. In fact, Saccharomyces on fruit are relatively rare (even on grapes and berries) - for example, Saccharomyces is found colonizing less than one percent of apples in an orchard. The primary environmental niche for Saccharomyces appears to be the bark of trees - especially oaks.

The mechanisms by which these yeast then spread to fruit is also fairly well understood - namely, insects such as wasps which feed on sugars from treebark and fruit.

There is one exception to this - vineyards - where humanities >10,000 years of cultivating grapes has led to selection of grape-specific yeasts which appear to survive via spread between grapes, soil & farming equipment.

Who knows if anyone has actually searched professionally for an apple cider specific yeast, some are sold as cider yeast but they never seems to be a story about where they came from. WVMJ

I know - as would anyone who read the earlier posts in this thread. This is an area of intensive investigation, and we're quite aware of where these yeasts came from, as indicated in the various links I, and others, posted at the beginning of this thread.

Bryan

 

[WVMJ]

Interesting, that would fly against the way nature usually works, might be they need to look where apples originated to find the wild source. WVMJ

 

[siletzspey]

The primary environmental niche for Saccharomyces appears to be the bark of trees...

Any speculation on the merits (and hazzards) of using say oak bark to seed yeasts into a batch of pasteurized cider? Could it be a more consistent and/or concentrated source of yeasts?

Its also interesting to consider that old farm houses and press equipment become fine environmental homes for the yeasts.

--SiletzSpey

 

[MarkKF]

Its also interesting to consider that old farm houses and press equipment become fine environmental homes for the yeasts.



--SiletzSpey

I've read that the old Belgian breweries used open fermenters with vents in the barn to let in wild yeast. They did this for centuries.

But modern science has found that while it may have worked early on later the yeast actually lives in the barn itself.

 

[Warthaug]

Any speculation on the merits (and hazzards) of using say oak bark to seed yeasts into a batch of pasteurized cider? Could it be a more consistent and/or concentrated source of yeasts?

Its also interesting to consider that old farm houses and press equipment become fine environmental homes for the yeasts.

--SiletzSpey

I've isolated a number of wild yeast strains from a number of sources, including various tree barks including maple & oak bark. So long as you follow good practices (e.g. not drinking/tasting until at least a month of fermentation has passed, using 10-15 IBU wort @ ~1.040 for yeast collection, etc) you should be safe - that's no guarantee that the yeasts you isolate will be worth using, but they won't kill you.

Its a shameless self-plug, but on my blog I have a bunch of articles (and videos) on capturing, testing and using wild yeasts.

As for presses/etc harbouring yeast, it makes perfect sense - you're starting off with an ideal home for the yeasts (wood) and ten providing repeated dosings of sugar-laden food for them to eat.

Bryan