Yeast experiments

seanyt · 09-13-2008, 03:34 PM

Beer yeast is a wonderful magical animal that eats sugar/carbohydrates and poops alcohol/CO2. Put in malt water to make beer and honey to make mead.. but I'm just wondering about how many other things out there that the yeast will eat and what will happen? What happens if beer yeast is added to just cane sugar and water? how about oatmeal or cream of wheat? How about soda? ( I would guess the acid content would kill the yeast but I don't know.) I know beer yeast is cultured specifically to survive best in wort but it seems like there are a lot of other things out there that yeast could eat.

I would experiment myself but this would get expensive real quick at the price of yeast these days. Anyone else with insight?

fratermus · 09-13-2008, 03:57 PM

Get a pure culture (wyeast/whitelabs) and plate it out or grow it in culture tubes. If you have good clean procedures you should be able to grow as much yeast as you like. This will minimize the yeast expense.