If you’ve harvested your own wild yeast, please tell me about it. Where did you find the yeast and what did you brew with it? Did you have a lot of failed attempts before you found a wild strain that you were satisfied with?
I harvest wild yeast. I’ve done both set the wort outside and also placing leaves into the wort. I start with 225 ml of wort. Add a few drops of lactic acid and 25 ml vodka. I let this ferment for four weeks, if it tastes good I do the same with about 500-525 ml wort. If this passes the taste test after four weeks, I make a 3 l starter. If after 3 weeks it tastes good, I use it in beer. I always start out with a simple Blonde-ish recipe, so I can really taste the yeast. I’ve used my cherry blossom yeast in my Spruce Amber quite a bit. I’ve had 4 successful and 2 failures.
Note, I am not a funker, so if you are looking for more funk, leave out the vodka. Below are a couple of links that were helpful for me.
Interesting! How does it compare to commercial yeast? Are you able to use it as the sole yeast for your fermentation or do you combine it with other yeast? Thanks for your reply.
I use it by itself. Sometimes you get a crazy attenuation like my Tulip got 92.1%, once your pitching to 5 gallon batches it acts like commercial yeast.
That’s so awesome.
That would make a hyper-local beer that you literally couldn’t make any where else.
Probably a bit on the advanced side for me at the moment but something that I’ll file away for later. Also makes me wonder about being a “yeast tourist” visiting different places and collecting samples to brew from later.
Wonder what airport security would say about a suitcase full of petri dishes?
Malta Goya soda works as a starter in a pinch. That wouldn’t work in a carryon, but you could certainly fit a 6-pack or two in your checked bags.
highly valuable post, i hadnt considered this and am also not into “funk” for regular consumption.
nice job enkamania, now im going to be searching out the details of this for hours and hours. 
One thing I left out, I add a couple of hop pellets to the early rounds. My latest is trying to get yeast from my hops.
I have made some starters from wild persimmons that grow on my property. I never actually made beer out of them though.
Ha… very clever. No one would ever suspect… 007 IBU
I’ve used the sour dough starter that I keep around for beer. Didn’t originate with me so who knows where the yeast came from. Also have made many batches of cider from the yeast that is already in it.
Does that mean you’ve been able to ferment cider with bread yeast? Would have assumed that it wouldn’t be robust enough to brew with judging by the super low FG readings that I’ve gotten from sandwiches.