Well, actually, they’re out to help us. Yeasts are those great little things that give us things like bread, probiotics, and some some bioremediation, but most importantly, they are what make beer and wine.
I’m putting together a class on how to capture, culture, and use wild yeast for homebrew beer making (and perhaps baking). Ideally, this would lead into a project to create a local yeast library of viable yeasts that if someone really wants to, can try to sell to the local homebrew market. Ideally, I’d like to mix this in with some of the other Science committee projects like genome mapping and GMO yeast creation.
Anyway, I’m looking to gauge interest about an intro class and see if we have any local experts that want to help me.
Does wild yeast garner the same fanfare as local honey? In other words, I know different environments create different yeast flavors, but are there health benefits to making your sourdough starter from wild yeast?
The theory is yes, but I haven’t found much research to actually back that up other than a backyard gardening website I ran across a while back.
My guess is that it may have some effect, but likely not as much as honey as far as local allergy alleviation; there are more of the local pollen and histamines in honey than you would get with a yeast. However there is possibly an argument for ingesting local yeast to add to your gut bacteria. I say this of course without any relevant background or documentation… just things that seem to make sense. Would be interesting to see if there is any research on it - let me know if you find more than I did.
I’ve done this twice for sourdough using the same ‘recipe’ for capture. I didn’t, however, use either for the making and baking of a loaf of bread. I have always been curious to know how the beer makers do this. Sadly, I was unable to attend your previous class.
