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Wild yeast???

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Ibrewinthesun

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Sep 9, 2015
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Hi Brewers,

Made my fifth batch Monday. Everything was done the same as the other bath except for this time I harvested my own yeast from my fourth batch. I boiled RO water for 20 mins. Along with my mason jars. I remove the mason jars with a pint of the water and allowed to cool. I pitch the yeast, stored it, and after 4 hours I checked in it. No bubbling and I start to see yeast forming in the side of the carboy. After work I checked on it again and found yeast that looked filmy. Is this wild yeast anyone ever used/seen before? I did some research about wild yeast and would be ok with it if is a useable yeast. Any thoughts?
 
Yuck, would be my first thought.

What yeast strain did you harvest from the fourth batch? And how much of the slurry did you use?
 
Looks like break material with some krausen on top. How long after pitching were those pics taken?
 
WL English ale. I don't know the exact amount of slurry but the mason jar was a pint. I made a starter for the yeast and let it sit for two hours before pitching it. There was little growth between the two hours.

So no one ever had this happen to them?
 
Two hours isn't really enough time for a starter to get going, at least visibly. Like I said, it looks like break material in the middle and krausen on top to me.

Is there airlock activity now?
 
WLP002, kind of what I thought looked like highly flocculated yeast not broken up yet. I bet in a day or so, the egg-looking stuff in the middle will either break up or fall to the bottom. Either way, looks like a healthy krausen so it seems good to me. Most wild yeast will be very powdery, and not what you see there. As BGBC said, 2 hours won't so much for a starter other than to check viability maybe. If the slurry was stored recently, like in the past 2 weeks, you can chuck it right in the wort, no starter needed.
 
If you pitched a pint of slurry, that is an awful lot of yeast. I think what you are seeing there is all the yeast floating around and they just haven't started full fermentation yet. Once they start fermenting it will probably break up and look more like you would expect.
 
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