Making wine from natural yeast

Kivanc · Sep 22, 2017

Is it possible to make wine from natural yeast? One of the recipes say:

Grab a handful of chopped grapes into a glass jar. Add 200 grams of flour and 200 grams of water on it. Cover with a clean cloth and leave one day to start fermentation in a warm environment. When tiny bubbles begin to form on it, it means that you have a sign of life. Grab the grapes with a wooden spoon. Take half of the yeast. Start to feed your diet with some water and flour.

Masbustelo · Sep 22, 2017

Somehow you have found a sourdough bread starter recipe. Forget the flour. You can put the grapes in a jar or baggie with some diluted orange juice or sugar water. Wait a few days and see if there is some activity. If there is, remove the grapes, add a little more juice and feed it some more. If it smells right and looks right you'll be ready to go.

NorCal · Sep 22, 2017

Sure it's possible, but for around $1 you can buy yeast that will give you successful ferments almost each and every time. Not all yeasts are created equal.

Kivanc · Sep 23, 2017

Masbustelo said:
Somehow you have found a sourdough bread starter recipe. Forget the flour. You can put the grapes in a jar or baggie with some diluted orange juice or sugar water. Wait a few days and see if there is some activity. If there is, remove the grapes, add a little more juice and feed it some more. If it smells right and looks right you'll be ready to go.

Thanks Masbustelo

There are couple of sourdough recipes without using grapes. Will they still serve the purpose? If they won't work without grapes then which kind of grape would I use? Can I use green grapes as well?

cmason1957 · Sep 23, 2017

Pretty much any kind of fruit MIGHT work. There is naturally occurring heat all around us and on everything. But, note the big MIGHT. That naturally occurring yeast might produce low alcohol, might be great. Might help flavors, might taste like cat pee. It's a gamble. It is much less of a gamble with commercial yeast.

BernardSmith · Sep 23, 2017

For sour dough you can use but you don't need to use fruit. There is enough natural yeast in the flour BUT you do really want to increase the pH of the dough to encourage the yeast to thrive and discourage the bacteria. You can get a kinda sorta fermentation from the bacteria but they tend to conk out before the yeast take over. The SOUR in sour dough is from the bacteria and not the yeast... and flour (grain) is FULL of lacto-bacilli . I think what happens is that the bacteria begin the process and the yeast take over IF the pH is low enough so that's why some folk add pineapple juice to their starter...