Our friend Issac recently introduced us to something we had not even thought about: making mead with wild yeast.
Issac was a San Francisco resident. Now he's a total wanderlust traveler, in search of the next best thing (probably in Taiwan with his amazing girlfriend, starting up some type of culinary endeavor such as a grilled cheese food truck... YUM). But before departing, he handed us a long list of items for which he no longer had the space or need. I casually skimmed, not expecting myself to jump at the idea of anything (because honestly, a lot of people just acquire junk and who needs more junk).... until I came across a few key items.
Funnels (trust me, as a homebrewer, you want funnels, and you want them in lots of different sizes)
Bread Yeast (please see the post about sustainability if you haven't already)
Air locks
Grolsch bottles
Apparently, our friend Issac had a thing for "wild fermentation." Be it breads or booze, Issac had been experimenting his little heart out. Taking the Grolsch bottle and putting some raw honey, water, and interesting fruits that we had to guess during his tasting, Issac had created some spectacular meads.
We have quickly followed suit.
But our endeavors have certainly hit a few obstacles. Our first attempt took raw honey, strawberries, and water into a Grolsch bottle, only to have no fermentation occur. Previously, we had been informed that raw honey has a certain amount of wild yeast in it, so natural fermentation should have occurred. It certainly has not.
Our second attempt took raw honey, water, and.... beer yeast. I don't know what we were thinking because that obviously didn't work either.
Our third attempt has shown a some activity! We placed raw honey and water into the bottle and... left it open by a windowsill to capture some wild yeast. Seems to have worked, my friends. Yet again, stay tuned.
