where does yeast come from.
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It’s a natural acuring fungus. It’s spores is all around you in the air. Leave some fruitjuice open in you kitchen and it will most probably start to ferment.
Yeast is a fungi. Fungi reproduce by spores, which fly around the air and then colonize habitable areas. Yeast is basically everywhere.
Unsure I understand the question? Yeast is very similar to bacteria, so asking where yeast comes from is like asking where bacteria, or any other form of life really, comes from. Yeast is technically a fungus, but is just a single cell instead of lots of cells like mushrooms or mold.
Its everywhere in the environment a microorganism that digests carbohydrates as part of its life cycle, there are numerous species of yeast adapted to live off all sorts of fruits etc.
Commercial yeasts are produced in a factory they are selected strains of yeast with known Charecteristics, which gives a particular amount of fermentation in a given set of conditions.
In wine making Commercial yeasts are favoured especially for mass market production as they give a more controlled and reliable wine.
However many high end wines will use wild yeasts- these are the particular blend of yeasts that have come to be present in the vineyard over time.
Wild yeasts tend to give a more complex and individual flavoured wines, however the fermentation is more difficult to control than with Commercial yeasts.
The product you’re thinking (down thread a bit) of is called Brewer’s Yeast, and it’s one of the more useful discoveries of human kind. It’s also one of the older ones.
Yeast is a fungus, single cellular, that “eats” sugar and starch and “expels” ethanol and carbon-dioxide. There are hundreds of different strains, think of them like breeds of dogs or cats, each has slightly different properties, but they are all closely related.
Thousands of years ago all yeasts were “wild” yeasts, multiplying in warm, moist, sugar-laden environments, and when the moisture dried up the fungi would also dry themselves out in a shell to protect themselves until the next time it is moist, warm, and sugar-laden. Dried up single-celled fungus is very light and easily picked up by breezes, and that allows the fungus to spread easily.
Eventually humans realized that fruit that had landed on the ground and started to rot actually made alcohol, and since the humans wanted the buzz they gathered fruit and specifically allowed it to rot. Do this enough times and you learn what to do and what not to do to make it turn out good. But the magic of why rotten fruit became alcohol wasn’t perfectly known, but what DID become known is that the foam that forms on top of mash for beer or wine, if introduced to another vat of juice or mash would make the process go faster and be more reliable.
Brewers would dry their foam, making a powder of it, and pour a goodly amount of the powder into their mash, and over time that made a few strains of yeast that are now known as Brewers’ Yeast. Eventually they tried adding the yeast to doughs made of flour and water, and the resultant breads were lighter, fluffier, and tasted better. The strains of yeast were eventually isolated and are now cultured, companies like Fleischmann’s have giant vats of mash that regularly have more starch and water added, with air bubbled up through it to keep the mix from killing off the yeast culture, and they skim material off at the same rate. The material pulled off is FULL of yeast, they then reduce the water content carefully (you can buy “wet block” yeast, it’s harder to work with but more reactive) until it’s the right level, package it up, sell it, and then bakers use the material to make bread and beer and wine and pizza dough and everything else that needs the same type of yeast each and every time.
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