Starter broth

[bashcraft]

I was looking through a Williams Brewery catalog the other day and noticed in their description of the yeast nutrient, they say to add 1/2 tsp nutrient, 3 tbs sugar (I assume they mean corn sugar) to 16 oz of water to make a "starter broth".

Now I've read many times that it's bad to make starters without wort, but I've never heard anything good or bad from someone who actually tried it. Has anyone tried it? Or is this maybe all heresay?

[RodMandrill]

I was looking through a Williams Brewery catalog the other day and noticed in their description of the yeast nutrient, they say to add 1/2 tsp nutrient, 3 tbs sugar (I assume they mean corn sugar) to 16 oz of water to make a "starter broth".

Now I've read many times that it's bad to make starters without wort, but I've never heard anything good or bad from someone who actually tried it. Has anyone tried it? Or is this maybe all heresay?

Here's some hearsay for you cause i've always made starters with DME:
That's only 42 grams of sugar so you're really not going to grow much yeast. You also have to worry about conditioning your yeast to eating sucrose instead of the more complex sugars in your actual wort, but I bet that wouldn't really be a problem with such a small amount.

Overall I bet this would be slightly better than just pitching the vial but why go through the trouble of making a starter with sugar? It's no easier than making it with DME.

[bashcraft]

I was looking through a Williams Brewery catalog the other day and noticed in their description of the yeast nutrient, they say to add 1/2 tsp nutrient, 3 tbs sugar (I assume they mean corn sugar) to 16 oz of water to make a "starter broth".

Now I've read many times that it's bad to make starters without wort, but I've never heard anything good or bad from someone who actually tried it. Has anyone tried it? Or is this maybe all heresay?

Here's some hearsay for you cause i've always made starters with DME:
That's only 42 grams of sugar so you're really not going to grow much yeast.

OK, so maybe you would need to use 4 tbs sugar. That's not the point.

You also have to worry about conditioning your yeast to eating sucrose instead of the more complex sugars in your actual wort,

This is where I'm having a problem. Where did this come from? Other than "I heard it from someone else".

[RodMandrill]

You also have to worry about conditioning your yeast to eating sucrose instead of the more complex sugars in your actual wort,

This is where I'm having a problem. Where did this come from? Other than "I heard it from someone else".

i heard it from the Pope! how dare you question his wisdom!

Kidding aside- this interesting paper says that in the presence of high glucose levels, the yeast can skip the growth phase and go straight to fermentation. sucrose is split into fructose and glucose by enzymes outside the cell, which increases the concentration of glucose in the medium. fine if you're trying to make alcohol-water, but not if you're growing up a pitch.

[Bugeater]

i heard it from the Pope! how dare you question his wisdom!

Kidding aside- this interesting paper says that in the presence of high glucose levels, the yeast can skip the growth phase and go straight to fermentation. sucrose is split into fructose and glucose by enzymes outside the cell, which increases the concentration of glucose in the medium. fine if you're trying to make alcohol-water, but not if you're growing up a pitch.

You got that right. By going straight to fermentation you will skip the ester production that comes from the reproduction process. Without these esters (even in "clean" beers) the beer will taste pretty lifeless. You want some amount of these esters. You can get pretty much the same result from overpitching by quite a bit, but at least in overpitching you will at least have enough yeast to reach your target final gravity.

Wayne

[bashcraft]

i heard it from the Pope! how dare you question his wisdom!

Kidding aside- this interesting paper says that in the presence of high glucose levels, the yeast can skip the growth phase and go straight to fermentation. sucrose is split into fructose and glucose by enzymes outside the cell, which increases the concentration of glucose in the medium. fine if you're trying to make alcohol-water, but not if you're growing up a pitch.

You got that right. By going straight to fermentation you will skip the ester production that comes from the reproduction process.
Wayne

OK, so you're saying that the yeast won't reproduce. I think I'm going to do an experiment. I'm making a starter from a slant with wort right now. I'll measure how much yeast I have when finished. Then I'll make another starter from a slant and the starter broth, then I'll find out how this effected the final yeast volume. If what you guys are saying is true, I shouldn't have any more yeast when finished as I did with the initial slant. I'm thinking the yeast nutrient might have a bigger effect on this than everyones thinking.