How did Monks and farmers do it? Farmers in Norway apparently do it with even less fanfare. http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/342.html
Terje took some wort in a plastic bucket. Then he brought out a plastic box of pale gray flakes. This was the kveik, which Terje got from a friend in Hornindal twenty years ago, and has been using since. Terje collects the yeast after fermentation each time, and hands it to his father-in-law, who then cleans and dries it, before storing it in the freezer.
Taken from the comments on the article:
As far as I know, nobody's ever written down or in any way documented the cleaning process. From what I gathered, the cleaning is the usual process of putting the yeast in water, then draining off the non-yeast part. This is repeated a few times. The yeast is then smeared on baking paper in a room in the cellar. Once it's dried into a thin (3-4mm) crust you can just crush it by folding the paper and drop it into a small plastic box and stuff it in the freezer.
