So I played with natural yeasts and cultivation. Had few strains isolated and kept in fridge. But recently one extremely resistant strain contaminated all of it.
Had some good brews, some bad, some meh. So what is yours experience, did you tryed it or want to?
Not for me I isolate single strain so it is more like commercial yeasts than wild.
That sounds like a nice weekend project. How do you isolate the strains? Do you make an agar plate and just spread around and then grow the colonies you like?
Weekend? It takes several weeks. You have few options to capture them - wort with fruit/leaves in mason jar, agar plate, wort sitting outside. Then let it ferment for 2 weeks, spread on plate, in incubator for 5 days. Then you take single “colony” repeat fermentation and agar plate step.
You don’t need special equipment just some Petri dishes and optionally incubator. For agar I made my own from wort. Everything is sanitised in pressure cooker.
After you have single strain on agar plate/tube you then have to propagate them and brew with it.
So several weekends then :D
What temperature do you incubate at? I reckon I could stick an airtight container in a dehydrator for temperature control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtXrsvNLCxk&list=PLZ3Z2428mCTqDFK-3ZSNpZBXJfTaMtRXE
I used this as my reference (I have lots of lab experience). Generally you need about 25°C for yeasts and fungi but 20 is enough. I use the insulated cold box with heat pad and thermostat. Dehydrator is overkill if you want to try it, some place with constant temperature is enough.