Wild Berries Fermentation Starter

A while ago I published my recipe for making Homemade Fizzy Lemonade with a fermentation method based on instant yeast. Now imagine there's a situation where everyone suddenly has to stay at home, and starts depleting local grocery stores of essential life sustaining products like toilet paper and the ingredients for baking bread - no more instant yeast. No worries, there's always the Ginger Bug to get fermentation going, says grandma Google - which I imagine is all the advice you need if you're somewhere in south Asia when the apocalyps hits, but a Darwin Award might await you if you keep searching the tempered forests of Europe for ginger roots.
What you're guaranteed to find here though, are wild blackberries. Let's work with that!
Make the Starter


1) Pick a handful of blackberries. The ripe berries have a deep purple-black color, and easily come off when picked - these carry wild yeast on their skins - exactly what we need to kickstart fermentation.
2) Crush the berries and add bit of water. Crushing exposes the juice and yeast to oxygen, while water helps create a medium for microbes to grow.
3) Keep at room temperature, stir occasionally. Stirring introduces air and distributes the yeast and sugar evenly, helping the right microbes thrive.
4) After about 3 days the bubbling should leave no doubt that the yeast is active. The bubbles are carbon dioxide- clear proof that fermentation is happening and your wild yeast is alive and well, and ready to use.
Caution: Your pocket survival guide probably already told you not to use the yellow snow for drinking water. For foraging blackberries (or anything else, really), it is recommended to pick berries that are 50cm or higher from the ground for preventing contamination with pathogens, and to be mindful of the environmental remnants of your local sociopath's activities (e.g. PFAS/heavy metals/... pollution).
Use the Starter (but Not All of It)



Use this fermentation starter in your favorite recipes! My primary use is naturally carbonated drinks like my Homemade Fizzy Lemonade, which I started to refer to as the Redbull of the apocalypse. Other uses could be sourdough-style baking, or with little extra imagination (but a little extra time) the lemonade recipe evolves naturally into a forest-born wine, ...
You can save a bit of the active starter in a bottle in the fridge. The cool environment slows down the fermentation process, allowing you to use it in the future for kickstarting your next fermentation starter. Or if a fridge is a luxury that you're not given, you can keep the yeast alive by feeding it sugar and cleaning its water.
So, Was That It?!
Yes, that was it. Nothing more, no fancy equipment, no magic steps. Just berries, water, air, and a bit of time. This kind of knowledge doesn’t usually show up in your average survival/bushcraft guide - so, now you know.