Culturing Wild Yeast for Mead, Cider, Beer, and Wine
Learn to culture wild yeast for mead, cider, beer, and wine brewing. This natural yeast starter uses homegrown, freshly picked figs, but you can use many different fruits and edible flowers to culture wild yeast.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- fermentation time: 3 days
- Total Time: 72 hours 10 minutes
- Category: homebrewing
- Method: fermentation
Ingredients
- 250 grams figs*
- 400 grams water
- 150 grams organic cane sugar
Instructions
- Sanitize Your Equipment: It’s crucial to ensure that your glass jar and any other utensils you use are clean and sanitized to avoid unwanted microbial growth.
- Prepare Your Sugar Water: In your glass jar, mix approximately 150g of organic sugar with 400 grams of filtered water. Stir until you dissolve all the sugar.
- Add Fruit: lightly rinse the fruit. Add the figs (or other fruit) to your sugar water.
- Cover and Wait: Cover the jar loosely with the lid, but tight enough to stop fruit flies from getting in. Twice a day, tighten the lid and shake the jar, then loosen the lid again.
- Observe Fermentation: You’ll notice bubbles and a pleasant, yeasty aroma as the yeast takes hold. This fermentation process may take 3-5 days.
- Use or Store: Once your yeast culture is active and bubbling, strain out all the fruit and use the strained liquid for brewing immediately, or store the strained liquid in the refrigerator for future use. click here for brewing recipes.
- Feed: If you haven’t used any for brewing, discard half and then feed your yeast some fresh sugar solution (150 g sugar dissolved in 400 grams water) once a month to keep it active and healthy.
Notes
- You can use many kinds of wild or homegrown fruit. Fruit from the store can also work, but it must be organic and it won’t work as well as freshly foraged or homegrown fruit.
