For the past couple weeks I've been diving headfirst into this wild yeast world.
I started off by collecting 12 samples of flowers or pine needles etc.. from around my yard and placing them in test tubes with 1.020 wort.
.
After just a couple days Tube #5 was churning with vigorous fermentation.
But, as I started looking at things under the microscope, I didn't see any yeast cells at all. The liquid was full of tiny swimming bacteria of some sort that was doing the fermentation.
In fact, all the tubes ended up that way. Either mold and no activity, or decent activity but no yeast cells. I don't know enough about lacto or pedio bacteria yet to know if that's what I had or not...
About a week later I noticed one lonely yeast cell on a microscope slide from Tube #12!! That was from a violet flower from the middle of a pasture field.
So I poured some hopped-wort agar plates and streaked three from Tube #12.
A few days later, after incubating at about 83F, I had quite a few colonies.
I sterilized a bunch of centrifuge tubes with 7ml of 1.020 wort, and inoculated 15 (5 colonies per plate).
I also scraped up one colony and mixed it into two drops of water and put it on a microscope slide to see what was there.
It looks like yeast to me!
I started off by collecting 12 samples of flowers or pine needles etc.. from around my yard and placing them in test tubes with 1.020 wort.
.After just a couple days Tube #5 was churning with vigorous fermentation.
But, as I started looking at things under the microscope, I didn't see any yeast cells at all. The liquid was full of tiny swimming bacteria of some sort that was doing the fermentation.
In fact, all the tubes ended up that way. Either mold and no activity, or decent activity but no yeast cells. I don't know enough about lacto or pedio bacteria yet to know if that's what I had or not...
About a week later I noticed one lonely yeast cell on a microscope slide from Tube #12!! That was from a violet flower from the middle of a pasture field.
So I poured some hopped-wort agar plates and streaked three from Tube #12.
A few days later, after incubating at about 83F, I had quite a few colonies.
I sterilized a bunch of centrifuge tubes with 7ml of 1.020 wort, and inoculated 15 (5 colonies per plate).
I also scraped up one colony and mixed it into two drops of water and put it on a microscope slide to see what was there.
It looks like yeast to me!
