What about yeast?
 

I've been reading a while on food preps and surviving a SHFT scenario but I have never heard any one mention yeast as an important tool in food preps. As a homebrewer I have tried to make cider from my families apple trees. Fruit trees seem to be the lowest maintnace and highest yielding crop in a SHFT scenario and sometime no matter what my family can't help but to not use all the fruit our yard produces. This is despite canning and eating fresh fruit. I think that fermenting fruits into wine could play a more important part in a future SHTF world. So I'd like to know what you think?

Re: What about yeast?
 

I am also a fruit grower and a winemaker. We grow apples, pears, citrus and grapes, but mainly apricots. They ripen all at once around July 4, and we drown in them despite our best efforts to eat, jam, can, sell, or give them away. Turning fruit into wine is an excellent way to store almost any type of excess produce, and I think it could be great for barter down the road.

I make at least 15 gallons of wine per year. It's easy for me until it gets to the bottling stage; that's where I fall down on the job. One year I made 70 gallons of apricot wine, most of which sat in the 5 gallon carboys until it was vinegar. So I make smaller batches now, and it's not quite so daunting. At the moment I have ~4 gallons of Cabernet that needs to be pressed, and 10 gallons of apricot wine from summer that should be racked. I think my friends are getting apricot wine for Xmas this year.

As for yeast, I have about 1 lb of bread yeast stored (in my wine fridge), but I haven't stockpiled wine yeast (different animal). I try to have some wine yeast around always, and am pretty confident that I could get a colony bootstrapped from just a small amount if it became unavailable. I also make sure to dump the yeast "lees" (live & dead yeast and other matter that precipitates out of the new wine) into my compost pile in hopes that it will go native. I do save bottles, though. Cases and cases of those.

I would highly recommend winemaking as a hobby. Check out Jack Keller's site for tips, techniques, and recipes for many fruit wines. http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/

Re: What about yeast?
 

I much prefer to make my own yeast... bread tastes so much better and I'm sure we all prep water and grain. Just google for capture yeast and you'll get loads of info. You can even freeze or dry it if you want. But why bother... yeast is everwhere.

Re: What about yeast?
 

Yeast is not a hard thing to obtain straight from the air. it can be capture, like undefined says, quiet easily from "nature" and harvested at will.

Flour and water mixed together will eventualy capture and grow a yeast culture. Then its just a matter of feeding it and helping it stay alive.

You can also store active dry yeast for a while, but I wouldnt buy a huge bulk of it.

If worse comes to worse you can use the active dry to help start a more permenant yeast culture as explain above(or google it if you need more info).

Cassandra has some great advice as well. Wine making will be an amazing thing to know when/if TSHTF. Until VERY recently, alcoholic beverages were the the staple way of PRESERVATION.

See the thread on salt too, as that is another extremely important item for SHTF.

Re: What about yeast?
 

I've been making wine now for about 10 years. I just started my yearly apple wine and I will be bottling the batch I started last year very soon. It is an excellent way of preserving food. However, unless you are set up for it now, you probably won't be able to get the necessities to make it. Fermenters are easy to find (just a food grade bucket w/ lid) but most people don't have long term storage on hand. Either barrels or bottles. Plastic water jugs will work, though, but aren't good for real long term solutions. In our disposable society, bottles are extremely available and dirt cheap. But a few years after a SHTF scenario will be very scarce.

As for yeast, grapes and plums have their own wild yeast. It's that white powdery film on the skin. Both of these will ferment very quickly. Cassandra is right, the yeast does get into the soil and go native. This is why the yeasty leftovers after fermentation are composted back out on the vines.

Fruits like apples pears and black berries don't have all the nutrients to ferment properly and aren't as easy to turn into a good wine. This is why college students always used to put raisins into a batch of apple wine. It would make it ferment better and drive it to a higher alcohol content. The alcohol doesn't become a good preservative until around 8-9 %.

The best thing(well maybe not the best) about wines is the vitamin C that it will give you. From what I have read you rarely ever heard about scurvey on French and Spanish sailing ships, unlike the British. This is said to be credited to serving the sailers a cup of wine with their meals. The British, however, served Rum, which has no nutritional value. To prevent scurvey they would eat limes from the New world. Thus we have the term "Limies"

On a common note, this is the same reason people planted Rhubarb as the pioneers moved westward in the USA. It is the first source of vitamin C in the spring. Asparagus is the first source of complex vitamin B. Rhutabagas are the only tuber that contains vitamin C and stores quite well in a root cellar. Cabbage is also a good source

sb

Re: What about yeast?
 

We keep two pounds of ADY vacuumed packed and in the chest freezer.

We are not wine makers, but it sure does well in bread.

Re: What about yeast?
 

Same here, we occasionally open one and use it, then replace with a new one in the deep freeze. When the opened container gets old, out it goes.

Re: What about yeast?
 

I don't know what you mean by "a huge bulk"; but I have over 3 pounds of dry yeast in the freezer right now. Bake my own bread every week from flour I mill from wheat berries myself. I don't really know how long frozen yeast keeps; but I can tell you from personal experience that we're talking years at least. The package I'm working out of now has a best if used by date of 10/2004. Keep it dry; keep it frozen. If you take an opened package out of the freezer, quickly remove what you need, re-seal it before condensation gets the granuals moist and pop it back into the freezer post haste.

Re: What about yeast?
 

Great skill, you should culture your own yeast, and use wild yeast which is already on your apples for cider. I also keep yeast in the freezer. You can recycle all of your dregs, after you bottle and keep it alive. There no reason to run out of yeast, EVER! It's everywhere. If you're worried, culture some in a test tube and leave it on ice

Re: What about yeast?
 

Does anyone know how to make dried yeast.

sb

Re: What about yeast?
 

Here's a page on how to catch wild yeast. Looks pretty easy; we're trying it now. There are also directions for how to propagate yeast if you have just a bit to start with and/or have trouble capturing it from the wild.

http://www.bigredcouch.com/journal/a...ild_yeast.html

Re: What about yeast?
 

how big are yeasts and how fast do they run? I've never considered hunting for them. Can you shoot em? :beer:

Re: What about yeast?
 

They're not very big, but they have a numerical advantage.

I shoot 'em, but only after their end product has been distilled. :coolbeer:

Re: What about yeast?
 

Oh my god! This is the first time one of my threads has been referenced (that I know of) in another thread. It's like I've finally arrived!

Re: What about yeast?
 

Just saw this for the first time, so sorry for the month late response and the reviving of an old thread, BUT....check your PM inbox.

Glad I could help! :signs1: :RockOn::coolbeer: