Growing baking yeast

[i_am2bz]

I printed out the milk recipe to keep in my emergency-stuff notebook. It seems easy enough, with ingredients you'd normally have around the house. Don't know where in the world I would find hops...! :/

 

[ORChick]

Tortoise, it sounds as though your freezer stash of yeast is not lasting "pretty much forever", but rather is dying off. I would use from half again to twice as much as your recipes call for, and maybe let it rise longer.

i_am2bz, you can find hops at a brewers' supply place, or probably at a health food store or market that has bulk herbs. Hops are often used by herbalists for their sleep inducing qualities.

 

[i_am2bz]

i_am2bz, you can find hops at a brewers' supply place, or probably at a health food store or market that has bulk herbs. Hops are often used by herbalists for their sleep inducing qualities.

Someone in an earlier post mentioned they grew in his/her yard, which is convenient...but I live waaay out in the country, there isn't a health-food store (much less a brewer's supply) for probably 40 miles But milk, salt, & flour...THAT I got.

 

[FarmerDenise]

Hops is a rather nice looking plant. It is a vine that will climb very high if you let it. Ex-SIL grew it in the backyard. You can find it in seed catalogs. The part that is usually used for brewing and sleep inducing is the flower.

 

[~gd]

Hops is a rather nice looking plant. It is a vine that will climb very high if you let it. Ex-SIL grew it in the backyard. You can find it in seed catalogs. The part that is usually used for brewing and sleep inducing is the flower.

Us hop-heads usually call them cones. They are the unfertilized fruit of female hop plants (yes hops have sexes or gender if you perfer that term) There are male plants and female plants but the males are only grown for seed production as their fertilization of female blossoms pretty much make them useless for brewing or medincine uses. (do they teach Botany in schools anymore if so do they just skip over the sex parts as being unsuitable for children? We are talking plants here.)

 

[Farmfresh]

Us hop-heads usually call them cones. They are the unfertilized fruit of female hop plants (yes hops have sexes or gender if you perfer that term) There are male plants and female plants but the males are only grown for seed production as their fertilization of female blossoms pretty much make them useless for brewing or medincine uses. (do they teach Botany in schools anymore if so do they just skip over the sex parts as being unsuitable for children? We are talking plants here.)

Not so much Botany anymore, but as I remember it a "hop-head" usually has more to do with poppies than brewing plants.

 

[patandchickens]

Sorry Pat but yeast does not produce sour dough, the sour is caused by bacteria of the same type that is used for lacto fermenting as in fermented pickles

Sorry but this is incorrect. Sourdough culture is generally a whole complex stew of things including both wild yeasts (Saccharomycetes) AND lactobacilli.

Pat you must have worked in a lab to know about Laminar flow hoods, but all you really need is a air lock bubbler that lets the gas out but lets nothing back in to a closed system

Nope, that won't keep your culture 'clean' (pure, without getting invaded by other microorganisms). It is, obviously, better than nothing, but you WILL get wild colonization over time. When you draw off yeast to use, and when you feed the culture.

I don't see where wild colonization is a *problem* -- the only downside of sourdough type cultures is that they work slower than packaged bakers yeast, but as long as you account for that, they are perfectly good and IMO much tastier -- but you have to be aware that it will HAPPEN.

Pat

 

[Farmfresh]

I agree with that Pat. Some "wild culture" sour doughs are kept for years, because the flavor is so divine.

 

[tortoise]

We have hops. I didn't know about the gender thing. We must have a girl.

 

[tortoise]

My fiance has done homebrewing so he's going to help me set this up with an air lock. I don't care if my vinegar (for cleaning) is contaminated, but both of us care if the yeast gets continated.