Wild Yeast Hunting
Running low on Yeast? Why not capture your own? It’s a very simple process. Boil 500ml of water with 45g of spray malt for 10 minutes, adding a pinch of any low alpha hops for the last 5 minutes. This will usually prevent bacteria or undesirables colonating your starter. Cool. Take a gravity reading, it should be about 1.042. Sieve into a small kilner jar (jam jar would do), put a bit of muslin cloth over the top and secure with an elastic band or string. Place somewhere in your garden for 24 hours. Bring it inside and seal. This is where the kilner jars come in handy as the rubber seal will let it vent a bit to avoid explosions. Keep it at room temperature and shake once a day, releasing any built up co2 before you shake. Within a few days you should notice signs of fermentation, after a week you might be able to see Yeast falling out of suspension. If mold grows or it smells really bad throw it away. It may take quite a while to reach its final gravity, which may or may not be as low as normal beer Yeast. Just depends what you get. Be patient. It's also worth tasting your samples, if it's nasty get rid. A Turkey Baster comes in handy to get the liquid out of the jar. The next stage is to build up the starter. I'll post about that when I do mine. Good luck and happy hunting.
Update: After a few days the starter was already building up a nice layer of Yeast and the aroma is the same dry funky citrus I've got previously. Must be the Cawood Yeast I keep getting, probably from the large Damson tree in our garden. I'll take a gravity reading once the fermentation looks to have slowed then build the starter up into a larger jar.
