Making starters with nutrient and corn sugar.

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Lyikos

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I am thinking of making a starter using corn sugar, yeast nutrient and accelerant. Would that work or should I just get DME for it?
 
It would "work" in that you'd get yeast reproduction, but then you'd have yeast that were prepared to work best on simple sugars and not maltose and maltiose.
 
You need to use some form of malt extract for your starters, because you want to acclimate your yeast to eating the more complex sugars, rather than the simple ones like corn/table sugar. Otherwise they'll go for the simple sugars and not be able to break down the more complex ones in your wort.

Prepare the Starter Wort

First thing's first, we're going to need some wort to use in our starter. By far, the best food for yeast that is going to be consuming wort in the very near future is, you guessed it, wort. I say this because you may, at some point, have the idea that you can just use table sugar for your starter. This is a bad idea because the yeast will become accustomed to consuming the simple sugars in table sugar and when it's time to eat up all those beer sugars (maltose, etc.) they will not take to the idea very well and may drop out of the fermentation before the job is done. Think of this as having to drink a Bud after having a great, homebrewed beer - you wouldn't want that and, in a way, it's the same with the yeast.

The best source of easy-to-prepare wort is dried malt extract (DME.) You will need enough DME to prepare a starter of about 1.040 OG. A higer gravity, regardless of the beer you're going to make, is not better as the higher gravity will stress the yeast more than is needed for simple propagation and will leave your yeast in bad condition for the fermentation itself. To achieve the proper gravity, you will need about 6oz (by weight) of DME for every 2 quarts of water1. That equates to roughly 3oz. of DME for every 1000ml of starter water you use.
 
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