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.

 

[Asmarino]

Woah, a whole weekend and no comments? How badly did I do?!

 

[ChuckD]

Sometimes on a busy posting day a post gets quickly pushed off the front page.

I’ve never made yeast nutrient or really researched the constituents but it should provide what you need. I would not go through the cold crashing and decanting. You don’t want to stress your new baby yeast too much. Just pitch your starter in after a day.

 

[Asmarino]

Sometimes on a busy posting day a post gets quickly pushed off the front page.

Thanks, I thought I made something so wrong that everyone just kept quiet, being nice.

You were right about the cold crash and decanting. I think I created selective pressure for only the fast flocculators. I'm currently at 50% of my sugar so we'll see how well they attenuate.

 

[winemaker81]

Woah, a whole weekend and no comments? How badly did I do?!

You're in the middle of the northern hemisphere grape season ... I purchased juice buckets Friday, pressed 600 lbs of grapes and started another batch Saturday, and drove 3+ hours to buy more grapes yesterday.

I saw your post Friday and intended to reply ... but you got pre-empted by my wines!

IIRC, @vinny made nutrient by boiling yeast to kill it. Hopefully he'll see this and chime in.

 

[ChuckD]

Thanks, I thought I made something so wrong that everyone just kept quiet, being nice.

You were right about the cold crash and decanting. I think I created selective pressure for only the fast flocculators. I'm currently at 50% of my sugar so we'll see how well they attenuate.

Yeah the whole point of a starter is to provide optimal conditions for fast yeast reproduction. Drastic temperature drops are very stressful for yeast.

 

[vinny]

IIRC, @vinny made nutrient by boiling yeast to kill it. Hopefully he'll see this and chime in.

All you have to do is call!

I am always creeping, just less time to post lately.

You can walk into any hardware store and get nutrient. I know people have used 10-10-10 and other off the shelf garden fertilizers as well as straight DAP. My understanding is that DAP is junk food for yeast. It provides energy with no substance. Kinda like if we were to do a 15 hour shift on donuts and coffee rather than taking the time for a quality meal. You will make it to the end of the shift, but you'll be in a bit of a wired frenzy.

My interpretation is that there is enough substance that things will keep moving along and you won't stall, but you have the possibility of off flavors developing. I bought DAP because Skeeter Pee or Dragon's Blood called for it. Once I learned enough to get really interested in the process I never used it again.

I had a stage where I was interested in making the most natural (way back recipe) wines that I could make, but I also had a coupe of $6 bricks of bread yeast that were well past expiration and I could finally tell it was getting sluggish. I went down the nutrition rabbit hole and found Fermaid O and Fermaid K. If I remember correctly O is straight up yeast hulls. Yeast are cannibals and dead yeast makes great nutrient. Fermaid K is yeast hulls with chemical enhancers. There is very little shared on using bread yeast, but I did find some direct experience.

There was no science in my method, but it has never failed. Never a stall or off flavors... Yet! With a knock on wood to not tempt fate.

I used the Fermaid O dosing as a rough starting point, and in the end out of simplicity or laziness I took a large 1/4 cup spoon from the drawer and added a scoop of yeast to a cup of water. I boil it to ensure the yeast is dead and the mixture hot enough to be sterile. I would often take that and split it between 3 6 gallon batches. and between day 2-4 I would dose again. If it was a single batch I put the yeast in the fridge and spread the dosing over a few days.

I am never skimpy, bread yeast is cheap, and it is all I use now. I have used it for kits and country wines and everything chugs along like normal.

I appreciate your ingenuity and desire to make what you have work, but simplicity always wins. My nutrient takes longer to cool than to prepare. The nice thing and fool proof part of this method is that any yeast not consumed will fall out of suspension with the rest before racking. No worries of adding malt or any other flavors so you can aggressively dose and err on the side of excess nutrient vs lacking.

Hopefully this entertains or gives you some retail products to use as comparables to make the process simple and easy for you!

 

[vinny]

I make a starter using about a cup of must. I dilute it about 50%, and give it a tbsp or 2 of dead yeast nutrient. I pitch my yeast and leave it next to the must. In the morning it is all at the same temperature and the yeast is active and partially acclimatized to what it will be dumped into.

Others have mentioned mixing up musts and leaving them overnight to allow things to blend in order to get a final SG before pitching and allowing temperatures to balance to ambient temps. I find mixing up the starter lets my impatient side relax while taking my time. The yeast catches up to where it would be if I pitched it the night before with time to colonize the starter mixture.

Wine is forgiving, and this is just what works for me.

 

[Asmarino]

@vinny!!!!! Thank you for your dosing regimen, that was the thing I was most uncertain about!

God, what I would do for Fermaids and DAPs and an HBS!