Critique my Homemade Mongrel Super Yeast Nutrient

[Asmarino]

I cannot source any yeast nutrient or yeast foods or any such stuff. There just aren’t any homebrew stores around, so I’ve resorted to making my own based off of several articles that I read on how you can make them yourself.

The base components are, of course, malt (since beer never seems to actually need nutrients) and boiled bread yeast (BBY). The actual process and ingredients are as follows:

• Started with about a ¼ a kilo (½ lb.) of traditional malted barley (malted then sundried) then forgotten in an empty NIDO can for a year or so, so not sweet on the tongue when chewed. I roasted it lightly on a frying pan on the stove till slightly golden though several started popping like popcorn and it smelled like biscuits
• Crushed them gently with a pin roll (that thing you flatten pizza dough with) till they were chipped but before they were pulverized into powder (we’re not aiming for porridge here)
• Put it in with a liter and a half (~6.5 cups) of water in a LARGE saucepan and bring it to a boil. (Don’t use a small saucepan with a hole at the side that makes you lose a third of what you made, just don’t)
• After it’s been boiling for 20 mins, add 250 grams (½ lb.) of dark raisins that you roughly chopped up and continue to boil.
• Add 11 grams (~ ½ ounce) of bread yeast to the boil and start fighting off the boil over with a spoon. Any spoon will do, the boiling wort (because that’s what this is) will sanitise it.
• Add the zest of 2 (nearly dried) oranges for acidity and some vitamin C as well as a ¼ of a tomato that’s been chopped to paste (YAN source, or at least tomato paste is, which I didn’t have, and didn’t want to buy in case it contained sorbates) to this brew
• Forget to add a teabag for tannin and an 1/8th of a banana because you’re muddleheaded and the toddler wants to play (and so did I)
• After this monstrosity has been boiling for an hour, take it off the fire, cover and let cool overnight.
• Filter with a wide sieve that traps the spent grains, the raisins and the zest but allows the yeast slurry to pass
• Add ½ a liter of boiled water to replace the wort you spilled overnight that your wife is making you clean up and put it in a 1½ liter plastic bottle and freeze till it’s needed
• Add 100ml (~6.5 tablespoons) of this ... stuff to 900 ml of water and 1 liter (dear Americans, that’s one quart) of your must to make a starter, inspired by winemaker81, that you will later cold crash and decant to keep the malt flavour out. Though I do intend to use two 50 ml additions of this nutrient in an 18 liter (4.75 gallon) prickly pear wine I’m making right now; once when a third of the sugar is consumed and again when 2/3rd of the sugar is consumed. I hope that just a 100 ml isn’t enough to be detected in that much wine.

So here you go, non-first worlders without HBS and Amazon. A yeast nutrient that can be made at home with lots of labour and fuel consumed. I will say that my starter multiplied like crazy, but then again, this is my first time making a starter so I don’t have any baselines I can go off on here.

So guys, tell me, how did I do? I will be back online on Monday, so please forgive me if I can’t reply before then.