Bootleg Biology: Backyard Yeast Wrangling Tool Kit

Bootleg Biology’s Backyard Yeast Wrangling Tool Kit includes everything the experimental homebrewer needs to capture wild bugs, create agar plates, and isolate yeast:

• Detailed instruction book & web-based content
• Half-gallon capture vessel
• Bug membrane systems
• Sterile cotton swabs
• Test tubes
• Pipettes
• Bootleg Biology’s Wild Yeast Agar blend
• Sterile petri dishes
• ParaFilm
• Bootleg Biology Fermetrics™ stickers
• The famous Bootleg inoculation loop (a paper clip)
• Free Local Yeast Project Contributor pack. Once you’ve isolated a strain, becoming a Contributor is a simple as sticking a cultured swab in the included envelope and dropping it in a mailbox. Postage is pre-paid in the U.S.!

As an added bonus: If you send your viable local yeast culture to Bootleg Biology, it will be banked in our laboratory freezer! You won’t ever have to worry about losing your fantastic local yeast culture.

Check out the YouTube video with Bootleg Biology’s Chief Yeast Wrangler acting as a hand model, demonstrating how to pour agar plates, streak cultures and isolate yeast.

F.A.Q.

Wondering how you’ll know what kind of microbe you’ve captured?

Check out the original Microbe Portrait Gallery: a handy visual reference guide to the morphology (size, shape & color) of some of the most common brewing and fermentation bugs. The page has pictures of Brewer’s Yeast, Brettanomyces, and Lactobacillus on agar plates and under magnification. This will help you figure out quickly what kind of microbe you may have isolated using the Backyard Yeast Wrangling Tool Kit.

But what if you also want to try isolating yeast from bottle dregs? 

The included Wild Yeast Agar Blend also grows the Brewer’s Yeast typically found in bottle-conditioned beers like a champ! Just add your dregs to a vial with low-gravity wort, incubate, and then follow the instructions for Isolating Yeast.

What do you do if you get stumped during the process? Give up all hope? Call your High School Biology teacher? 

Nope! Each Tool Kit instruction manual includes an email address answered by our Chief Yeast Wrangler. No problem is too small, no question is too simple. We want you to become an amazing yeast wrangler, so we’re here to help!

Still interested in reading more about the Tool Kit? Check out Heather Vandenengel’s interview with our Chief Yeast Wrangler in Craft Beer & Brewing: Yeast Wrangling for Homebrewers.