Using sugar (cane, corn, table, etc) to make a starter?

Hello all,

Just like the title says, should it be done? I am guessing it could be done but would any one advise this?

I am asking because I live 40 miles away from my "local" HBS and it is a big pain in the ass. If I am in a pinch and need to make a starter, could I just use some sugar to feed the yeast I have saved from a previous batch? Is this advisable?


Thanks all

Ummm. I don't think that's a good idea. Feeding sucrose or dextrose to yeasts is like feeding desert before the main course. They won't like the maltose cuz' it's too much work, and they are already full.

http://www.mrmalty.com/starter_faq.htm

Use an all malt wort for starters. The sugar in the starter needs to be maltose, not simple sugar. Yeast that have been eating a lot of simple sugars stop making the enzyme that enable it to break down maltose, which is the main sugar in wort. The yeast quickly learn to be lazy and the ability to fully attenuate a batch of beer suffers.

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How old is the previous batch you harvested from? If it's less than a month, you don't really need to make a starter for it.

Thanks for the responses, The yeast is only about two weeks old, so I will just pitch appropriate amounts, per Mr. malty calculator

Thanks guys

A few months ago I made a starter from a slant of WLP002 using 1/2 DME and 1/2 cane sugar to make the wort. Everything worked perfectly. In fact I'm currently drinking the batch and it tastes great.

Hey edecambra,

I have been using table sugar for starters for about a year now. I use the same ratio as I did when I made my starter wort from DME: about 100g to 1L of water. I am always sure to use some yeast nutrient to increase nitrogen content; also I usually throw in some plain bread yeast into the boil to provide a source of lipids. You can also boil some of the dregs from a primary or secondary fermenter if you don't keep any bread yeast on hand.

I've not had any issues with the starters, nor the primary fermentation of the beers that they were made for. I pitch the starter at high krausen (yeah, the whole darn thing), or I sometimes chill and decant before pitching if I have the time. My yeast (usually WLP001 / US-05, more recently Bell's) seem to like to eat any type of sugar they can get their greedy hands on, rather than turning up their noses at maltose like so many homebrewers have reported in the past.

You will get plenty of naysayers on this forum when discussing this subject, even though it is clear they are simply parroting an old myth without any practical experience in the matter. Do yourself a favor and try it first before making your decision.

40 miles is a long drive....

+1 to grove's statement.

I think the bigger concern with sugar starters isn't that yeast lose their appetite for maltose though I'm sure that could happen over several generations of such propagation. Growing yeast on pure sugar would be like trying to feed a person on nothing but sugar. Wort has all sorts of other necessary nutrients and chemicals necessary to synthesize new cells. You could probably get away using sugar for propagating yeast if you supplement it with a 'complete' nutrient like other dead yeast cells that have been broken down by a boil (or the wyeast/white labs complete nutrients that are available).

it is a long drive, and thanks for all the help everyone.

I am still pretty new to this, only having brewed a handful of batches, and this is what I have picked up so far: there are plenty of tried and true methods, and then there are alternatives that when measured may not produce the same results, but when it comes to taste, produce very little discernible difference. I just appreciate hearing it from all angles.

One question: why supply old yeast/ bread yeast as a nutrient? I had no idea that was a possible source of nutrients, anyone care to expand? Thanks all.

grove said:

Hey edecambra,
You will get plenty of naysayers on this forum when discussing this subject, even though it is clear they are simply parroting an old myth without any practical experience in the matter. Do yourself a favor and try it first before making your decision.

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If you're going to throw around a line like, "parroting an old myth" I think it would be advisable to either establish your own credentials or at least validate in some manner how you arrived at your conclusions.

Mr. Malty (Jamil Z) writes on his site, "Use an all malt wort for starters. The sugar in the starter needs to be maltose, not simple sugar. Yeast that have been eating a lot of simple sugars stop making the enzyme that enable it to break down maltose, which is the main sugar in wort. The yeast quickly learn to be lazy and the ability to fully attenuate a batch of beer suffers."
(Source: http://www.mrmalty.com/starter_faq.htm)

Given that he's won numerous medals in homebrew competitions and is currently working on a book about beer yeast I'm more inclined to trust his practical experience than yours.

chrispykid said:

Given that he's won numerous medals in homebrew competitions and is currently working on a book about beer yeast I'm more inclined to trust his practical experience than yours.

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All the "experts" use to say that the world was flat too.

bja said:

All the "experts" use to say that the world was flat too.

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So if an expert was wrong about something hundreds of years ago then all the experts on any subject today aren't to be trusted? Please...

All I'm saying is that if you're going to express an opinion that flies in the face of accepted wisdom then you ought have something to back it up with. Magellan (or at least his crew) sailed around the world to prove it was flat. If you can point to some controlled studies that show yeast in a simple sugar solution producing as much or more of the enzymes that enable it to attenuate maltose than an otherwise identical malt starter than I'll happily change my process and start brewing starts with simple sugars. Until then I'll go with the process recommended by both White Labs and Wyeast.

chrispykid said:

So if an expert was wrong about something hundreds of years ago then all the experts on any subject today aren't to be trusted? Please...

All I'm saying is that if you're going to express an opinion that flies in the face of accepted wisdom then you ought have something to back it up with. Magellan (or at least his crew) sailed around the world to prove it was flat. If you can point to some controlled studies that show yeast in a simple sugar solution producing as much or more of the enzymes that enable it to attenuate maltose than an otherwise identical malt starter than I'll happily change my process and start brewing starts with simple sugars. Until then I'll go with the process recommended by both White Labs and Wyeast.

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How about pointing to a controlled study where the opposite is shown? So far all I have seen is anecdotal evidence on both sides.

I would suggest folks listen up to some pod casts on the Brewing Network where you can listen to the experts talk such as the professor from UC Davis school of brewing (can't remember his name off the top of my head) or Chris White from White Labs who have actual scientific credentials and recommend against using anything but maltose for a starter sugar. It doesn't mean that it is impossible to make one with table sugar, just that there is good reason to avoid it.

Arguments aside, just go to your local grocery store and pick up some Malta Goya and use that for a starter in pinch.

Ahhh, I was always wondering about the Goya malt beverages, they work well as a "pinch" substitute for malt? This is good to know.

weirdboy said:

How about pointing to a controlled study where the opposite is shown? So far all I have seen is anecdotal evidence on both sides.

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I don't have them. I have sources I trust that say they do. I've laid those sources out in my earlier posts. You can also check Bensiff's post above for more sources. I think there's plenty of credibility in those sources, but your free to make your own judgments as to how trustworthy they are.

On one side you have the considered recommendations from two major yeast manufacturing companies, a professor from UC Davis and an award winning brewer who is soon to publish a book on the subject for Brewers Publications. On the other side there is... ___________ (fill in the blank)

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A caveat here:
I don't want to make this a contentious back and forth. If Grove or other Brewers here have made good beer using sugar starters I applaud them for it and don't doubt the quality of their beer. They're probably doing some great things in their brew process. It's just that there are some good reasons to believe that they would be better served with a DME starter and I think the reason we all come here is to learn the best process possible and I'm laying out those reasons.

I'm not knocking anyone's beer here - I've learned too much from too many people on this site to go down that road.

I thought I heard that white labs used corn sugar for their yeast propagation, and at high temperatures. Granted, that's not really the same as building a starter.

chrispykid said:

So if an expert was wrong about something hundreds of years ago then all the experts on any subject today aren't to be trusted? Please...

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I don't 100% trust anybody's opinion unless they're presenting me with hard proven evidence. I guess it's my engineering background.

All I'm saying is that if you're going to express an opinion that flies in the face of accepted wisdom then you ought have something to back it up with. Magellan (or at least his crew) sailed around the world to prove it was flat. If you can point to some controlled studies that show yeast in a simple sugar solution producing as much or more of the enzymes that enable it to attenuate maltose than an otherwise identical malt starter than I'll happily change my process and start brewing starts with simple sugars. Until then I'll go with the process recommended by both White Labs and Wyeast.

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There are many people using simple sugar for yeast starters without any discernable effects. I have a copy of Williams Brewing catalog and they outline a procedure to make a starter from simple sugar.

Nobody is asking you to change your procedure, just don't bash something that you can't totally disprove.

The yeast quickly learn to be lazy and the ability to fully attenuate a batch of beer suffers.

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Yeast don't get lazy. Yeast don't learn. They turn on genes as needed or turn them off when they are not, to save resources (though obviously not consciously). Occasionally, they outright lose a gene or alter its expression level or activity via mutation. Over many generations, yeast populations will experience genetic drift. Most homebrewers won't keep yeast long enough to experience that. You can minimize the drift by selecting for the ones that behave like their parental generations.

I've monitored protein expression in lab yeast growing at 30 degrees C. It can take a couple of hours at that temperature for a gene's expression level to come to its full level, though the exact time depends on the gene. The specific gene I was monitoring was invertase. At ale temperatures it will take longer and even longer at lager temperatures.

The enzyme maltase is an example of such. It's not expressed if not needed, which it wouldn't be if one used glucose in a starter. Having the yeast pre-loaded with maltase is the real benefit of growing them in a malt starter. That gives an earlier start to active yeast growth in a medium in which the predominant sugar is maltose.

chrispykid said:

I don't have them. I have sources I trust that say they do. I've laid those sources out in my earlier posts. You can also check Bensiff's post above for more sources. I think there's plenty of credibility in those sources, but your free to make your own judgments as to how trustworthy they are.

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I respect their expertise too, but until I see actual studies in similar conditions to what we do in homebrewing it's just an opinion. There have been many cases in the past (e.g. secondary fermentation, autolysis, no-chill) where these same experts have expounded opinions which were later shown to be either incorrect or inconsequential on a homebrew scale. And I really mean that...exactly the same people have been quoted to prove or disprove ALL of these methods in the past. Especially when I see that homebrewers are actually using these processes with good results, the expert opinion does not gain much credence without hard evidence to back it up.

I respect Jamil, and John Palmer, and Charlie Bamforth as much as the next guy, but the majority of their research and knowledge tends to come from large-scale brewing where things are just different. Yeast operate at higher pressures and temperatures, the fermenter geometry is completely different, etc.

How many times have you used formulas in your life? Unless you want to spend your whole life coming up with the same formula, you just have to trust that an "expert" has correctly done the work for you. Unless you are willing to go through the processes of proving or disproving every concept, you just have to have faith.

I decided to use barley, hops, water & yeast in my beer, because that's what the experts say are the most common ingredients in most beers. I'm not going to malt every plant in the world to see if it is really makes good beer. I'm not going to have analysis done on many commercial beers to prove that those are the main ingredients.

In closing, how about we give the commonly accepted answers to questions, and leave the theories for brew science forum?

Sorry to OP, as I believe your question was answered.

JohnMc said:

Yeast don't get lazy. Yeast don't learn. They turn on genes as needed or turn them off when they are not, to save resources (though obviously not consciously). Occasionally, they outright lose a gene or alter its expression level or activity via mutation. Over many generations, yeast populations will experience genetic drift. Most homebrewers won't keep yeast long enough to experience that. You can minimize the drift by selecting for the ones that behave like their parental generations.

I've monitored protein expression in lab yeast growing at 30 degrees C. It can take a couple of hours at that temperature for a gene's expression level to come to its full level, though the exact time depends on the gene. The specific gene I was monitoring was invertase. At ale temperatures it will take longer and even longer at lager temperatures.

The enzyme maltase is an example of such. It's not expressed if not needed, which it wouldn't be if one used glucose in a starter. Having the yeast pre-loaded with maltase is the real benefit of growing them in a malt starter. That gives an earlier start to active yeast growth in a medium in which the predominant sugar is maltose.

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Thank You, this sounds much more credible than "they get lazy" or "they forget how to do... ..." SCIENCE!

Jamil may brew great beers, but his word is not the word of brew-god... bottom line - do what works for you! making beer, even good beer, is not that difficult.

do what works for you! making beer, even good beer, is not that difficult.

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Big +1 on that; some of the best beer I've had is from folks who don't understand the science or biology behind brewing, but follow a well established procedure that yields a high quality product. Makes me thirsty...

Jeebus people. Just make a starter with DME at the recommended ratio of 10:1. It works, it's proven. If you want to experiment, start another thread.

Jesus christ people need to step back and breath.

Make 1 starter with DME and make 1 starter with Dextrose (or any other sugar). Pitch them into identical beers and ferment out, bottle and taste in a month.

How many times have you used formulas in your life? Unless you want to spend your whole life coming up with the same formula, you just have to trust that an "expert" has correctly done the work for you. Unless you are willing to go through the processes of proving or disproving every concept, you just have to have faith.

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As a matter of fact, as an engineering student I basically spent 4+ years of school deriving all the formulas I've used for the rest of my career. Every physics test I took in college I would work out the formulas I needed from F = ma. When I was doing finance calculations for my recent mortgage I didn't just trust the lenders and brokers. I did the math myself and worked out all the numbers in excel.

To me it is important to understand how and why things work, and use my own reasoning rather than just blindly trust other people's opinions, especially when those same people have been shown to profess incorrect or misleading opinions several times in the past, out of ego and/or their own ignorance. Again, it is not that I don't respect their opinions, but I take them with a grain of salt. If those opinions are formed out of an incomplete understanding of the subject, then all you are doing by regurgitating that is spreading more ignorance. There's a lot of stuff in brewing that basically boils down to "well that's just the way they've been doing it for 400 years" that isn't necessarily the best or only method one can use, especially on the homebrew scale.

chrispykid said:

If you're going to throw around a line like, "parroting an old myth" I think it would be advisable to either establish your own credentials or at least validate in some manner how you arrived at your conclusions . . . I'm more inclined to trust his practical experience than yours.

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Hehe, I don't have the time for all your demands of "validation" and "credentials"--I'm too busy drinking good beer, catching fish, and generally enjoying my summer. Just voicing my experiences with sugar starters with the intent of helping a fellow homebrewer, not trying to flamebait you. Trust whoever you care to, it worries me not.

reelale said:

Jeebus people. Just make a starter with DME at the recommended ratio of 10:1. It works, it's proven. If you want to experiment, start another thread.

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reelale, did you even read the title of the thread you're posting in? maybe you should be the one to start another thread, as you're certainly not contributing anything useful to this one.

can i use table sugar to make a starter and just add yeast nutrients ??