No DME, what to make starter with?

Beer_Guy said:

Think about it.

A cell eats a little nutrient and a little food. It wants to procreate. It splits. Using the supplied foods it has, the next cell will be able to use those same foods a little better. The new cell does this same thing. Now this continues for several generations with each new cell being able to use the foods that are available to it better than the previous.

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First yeast do not want to procreate, they are reacting to external stimuli. Second, your example is describing Lamarckism which does not apply here. What is actually occurring when you grow yeast in sucrose, glucose or any other sugar is that you are expressing the genes for to import and use these sugars. It will take many generations for these cells to become adapted to using only one type of sugar efficiently. I would expect it would take thousands of generations under highly controlled conditions and population sizes to evolve strains to that lose their efficiency to use maltose.

What is actually occurring when you grow yeast in sucrose, glucose, or other sugar sources for a starter is that you are encouraging the yeast to express the genes to take in the sugar and use that sugar for energy. The lag time that occurs after pitching is due to the lack of transporters for other sugars in the cell membrane and the necessary enzymes for use in fermentation. The longer you grow the yeast in the non maltose sugar media the longer it will take for the maltose specific enzymes to be produced.

a10t2 said:

The issue isn't actually mutation. The commercial yeast cultures we're using are very pure in terms of containing only haploid cells, and even if they weren't, there wouldn't be enough generations for mutation to be a concern.

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Actually, brewer's yeast is not haploid. It is actually polyploidy and/or a aneuploid. Strains used for brewing sporulate poorly and many of them that are formed are nonviable. These strains may have evolved this polyploidy genome structure for gene dosage. Incomplete cell division may have occurred during a fermentation and thus the yeast cell had twice as many copies of the genes for transport metabolism of maltose. These cells proliferated and the duplicated genes were retained. This actually creates a situation where recessive mutations will be highly masked in the genome and you will less likely to see mutations in a few generations.

ChshreCat said:

I'd highly recommend against that. You would be breeding your yeast to digest table sugar and they won't be able to make the enzymes required to break down maltose as well. So, you'd be pitching a weaker yeast and could have fermentation issues. Given the choice, I'd rather just pitch what you have without a starter and aerate really well before using a table sugar starter.

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GilaMinumBeer said:

All published and all conspiring to spread propoganda that sucrose alone does not make a good starter for beer fermentation.

But please, do prove them wrong.

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I think an experiment is in order. The wort in your beer contains small amounts of glucose and sucrose. When yeast are pitched they will first go into lag phase. They do this because most pitched yeast come from a nutrient deficient fermentation media. They are faced with three main stressors, glucose, oxygen, and osmotic pressure. After growing in maltose rich environment they will have lost most of their ability to transport glucose into their cells. In the presence of glucose the cells will use this molecule and the cells will start to create the proteins needed to transport and metabolize glucose. Then when the glucose becomes depleted the enzymes for sucrose need to be created. Then sucrose becomes depleted and now the genes to metabolize maltose are expressed. I would feel that growing yeast in a starter under aerobic conditions in a glucose media would actually reduce the lag phase. A shorter lag phase will mean the yeast will have higher vitality and viability than yeast with a longer lag phase. In the next month or so I will try pitching from yeast grown in a few different media and see what happens

peoplesbrewingcoop said:

I think an experiment is in order. The wort in your beer contains small amounts of glucose and sucrose. When yeast are pitched they will first go into lag phase. They do this because most pitched yeast come from a nutrient deficient fermentation media. They are faced with three main stressors, glucose, oxygen, and osmotic pressure. After growing in maltose rich environment they will have lost most of their ability to transport glucose into their cells. In the presence of glucose the cells will use this molecule and the cells will start to create the proteins needed to transport and metabolize glucose. Then when the glucose becomes depleted the enzymes for sucrose need to be created. Then sucrose becomes depleted and now the genes to metabolize maltose are expressed. I would feel that growing yeast in a starter under aerobic conditions in a glucose media would actually reduce the lag phase. A shorter lag phase will mean the yeast will have higher vitality and viability than yeast with a longer lag phase. In the next month or so I will try pitching from yeast grown in a few different media and see what happens

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there actually is a full study of this floating around the Internets. A dusty white paper full of mathematical caculations that express Brewers Yeast phased metabolism of sugars and the preferencial order in which they munch on them.

I recall linking the pdf to another thread regrading yeast and sugar, but I'll be damned if I know which. Heck, knowing this place it could have been linked in a thread regarding something entirely differet that went on a tangent. Not like that happens often.

GilaMinumBeer said:

there actually is a full study of this floating around the Internets. A dusty white paper full of mathematical caculations that express Brewers Yeast phased metabolism of sugars and the preferencial order in which they munch on them.

I recall linking the pdf to another thread regrading yeast and sugar, but I'll be damned if I know which. Heck, knowing this place it could have been linked in a thread regarding something entirely differet that went on a tangent. Not like that happens often.

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A Journal of Experimental Hombrewing is needed, haha

peoplesbrewingcoop said:

…I would expect it would take thousands of generations under highly controlled conditions and population sizes to evolve strains to that lose their efficiency to use maltose.
…

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FYI; I made wine years ago with baker’s yeast, Welch’s Grape concentrate and a lot of cane sugar. It took only a few generations not thousands to go from a yeasty tasting crap wine to a fizzless Andre Champagne like wine. My wife and friends still rave about it.

I cannot say if the yeast would still do fine with bread or not. But they sure grew to like the mix I gave them.

Beer_Guy said:

FYI; I made wine years ago with baker’s yeast, Welch’s Grape concentrate and a lot of cane sugar. It took only a few generations not thousands to go from a yeasty tasting crap wine to a fizzles Andre Champagne like wine. My wife and friend still rave about it.

I cannot say if the yeast would still do fine with bread or not. But they sure grew to like the mix I gave them.

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I have no doubt that the baker's yeast you used reactivated genetic networks that were long dormant because of its long role in bread making. I highly doubt adaptive evolution was occurring as you fermented champagne. You need to take into account the population sizes and growth rate of the yeast used to accurately judge evolution. This is just changes in the environmental and a response in gene expression. This is phenotypic plasticity.

It seemed the other posts were suggesting that the strains were evolution to become better adapted to the fermentation environment. I would suspect that the strains of yeast being used in brewing are highly robust to different environments but may just be slow in adjusting (not adapting) to the new environment.

peoplesbrewingcoop said:

…in adjusting (not adapting) to the new environment.

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I bow to your use of the proper words on this subject.

Beer_Guy said:

I bow to your use of the proper words on this subject.

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Ha, no need to bow. I love homebrewing as this is how beer should really be made, not in a giant brewing factory. We have to compete with the giant brewers that keep information secretive. If we all know what is going on we will be able to kick them in the butt. We can all make better beer from our first brew compared to the giant beer companies, but I bet the homebrewing community can make the best beers period.

Feel free to argue and doubt me anytime as the only way to make good brews is by experimentation and critical review.

Back to the topic. I recall one source from Brewing Microbiology by Priest and Campbell that when 50% of the glucose, sucrose, and frucose in the media is consumed the yeast will start to switch its membrane proteins to import maltose. Direct quote (pg 87), "When glucose concentration is high, >1% (w/v), the Mal genes are repressed and so in brewery fermentations maltose uptake normally occurs when 50% of glucose has been taken up by the yeast."

Just my speculation, but it would seem to me that growing a yeast starter in pure malt extract would be disadvantageous. My reason is because the yeast growing in the yeast starter were likely in the stationary phase from a spent fermentation so two adjust its gene expression to using the small amount of glucose present in the malt extract. Then the when that is spent the yeast adjust to the maltose. The yeast is then pitched into the wort which has the small amount glucose in it so the yeast have to transfer the maltose enzymes and transport proteins for glucose. Then again when the glucose is depleted the yeast need to adjust back to maltose. I feel that pitching yeast into wort would be better if the starter yeast are grown in glucose media as it would give the yeast a running start when it hits the malt.

Maybe the previous people that have seen that pitching from a malt starter had other variables that affected the length of lag phase, such as oxygenation.

peoplesbrewingcoop said:

I recall one source from Brewing Microbiology by Priest and Campbell that when 50% of the glucose, sucrose, and frucose in the media is consumed the yeast will start to switch its membrane proteins to import maltose. Direct quote (pg 87), "When glucose concentration is high, >1% (w/v), the Mal genes are repressed and so in brewery fermentations maltose uptake normally occurs when 50% of glucose has been taken up by the yeast."

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Palmer says (How to Brew p31) that in a "typical" wort 8% of the sugars are glucose, so that would be 1 wt% at 12.5°P. Which makes it sound like whether or not you were over that threshold depends on mash parameters. What is "typical" would really be the question.

peoplesbrewingcoop said:

Just my speculation, but it would seem to me that growing a yeast starter in pure malt extract would be disadvantageous. My reason is because the yeast growing in the yeast starter were likely in the stationary phase from a spent fermentation so two adjust its gene expression to using the small amount of glucose present in the malt extract.

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There could be a difference between repitching and using a new commercial culture in that case. AFAIK the yeast labs grow their cultures below 0.5°P to prevent fermentation.

From a practical perspective, wouldn't you expect to get a healthier fermentation by pitching yeast that are conditioned for the biggest sugars available (trisaccharides)? It seems to me that having them break down the most difficult sugars first, then move on to the easier stuff, would be advantageous.

Then again, this paper would seem to suggest that the sugars are all metabolized simultaneously when the yeast are propagated in wort. So at the very least there's no consensus.

a10t2;2118661 From a practical perspective said:

this paper[/URL] would seem to suggest that the sugars are all metabolized simultaneously when the yeast are propagated in wort. So at the very least there's no consensus.

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I requested this paper from a university library so I can read the rest. I will share when it is emailed to me. I also found another paper that may say something about the sequence of use.

GilaMinumBeer said:

Dusty old white paper.

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Talk about 'old', it is from 1932!

peoplesbrewingcoop said:

I also found another paper that may say something about the sequence of use.

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Here's the full text of another paper by the same authors: http://www.scientificsocieties.org/JIB/papers/1993/1993_99_1_067.pdf

Cells pre-grown in maltose and harvested while the sugar is still present in the medium are more adapted to utilize maltose, and glucose uptake is inhibited during the early stages of fermentation. However, cells permitted to grow for longer periods (stationary growth phase) lose their ability to preferentially utilize maltose. These cells become more sensitive to glucose repression, and are able to utilize glucose faster than those harvested with maltose remaining in the medium.

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Most of the studies I'm finding that cite a defined sequence use one of their papers as the reference.

a10t2 said:

Here's the full text of another paper by the same authors: http://www.scientificsocieties.org/JIB/papers/1993/1993_99_1_067.pdf



Most of the studies I'm finding that cite a defined sequence use one of their papers as the reference.

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There they go with the use of that word 'adaptation' when they have no evidence adaptation has occurred.

Yeah, they should really use something like "predisposed".

ChshreCat said:

Malta Goya is another option if you can find that in the latino section of your grocery store.

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Really? As a starter? I live in a heavliy populated Hispanic area and know right where that is...just boil it and pitch yeast into it for starter? I know it is a malt beverage it is disgusting though. Like carbonated unhopped unfermented grain beverage haha.

agroff383 said:

Really? As a starter? I live in a heavliy populated Hispanic area and know right where that is...just boil it and pitch yeast into it for starter? I know it is a malt beverage it is disgusting though. Like carbonated unhopped unfermented grain beverage haha.

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Exactly! Just get rid of the carbonation and you have starter wort! Don't think anyone of us would choose to do this, but in a pinch...

wyzazz said:

Did you say you usually make a starter for Dry Yeast? Dry yeast is already in it's optimal state when it's freeze-dried, just pitch another packet if you need more it's dirt cheap anyways.

As far as the starter for the wlp001 goes you can follow the above advice or you can pick up some US-05 from the LHBS, it's the same (chico) strain.

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I don't know - around here sachets of the safeale is $3-$3.5/each. if you're going to pitch 2, you might as well spend the extra dollar or two and get a smack pack IMHO. you're right if you're talking notty though, which is significantly cheaper locally.

beesy said:

if you're going to pitch 2, you might as well spend the extra dollar or two and get a smack pack IMHO. .

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Yeah, but then you have to make a starter. So you have the price of 2 packs of yeast PLUS the DME. If you go dry, it's cheaper.

wyzazz said:

Did you say you usually make a starter for Dry Yeast? Dry yeast is already in it's optimal state when it's freeze-dried, just pitch another packet if you need more it's dirt cheap anyways.

As far as the starter for the wlp001 goes you can follow the above advice or you can pick up some US-05 from the LHBS, it's the same (chico) strain.

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ChshreCat said:

Yeah, but then you have to make a starter. So you have the price of 2 packs of yeast PLUS the DME. If you go dry, it's cheaper.

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Touche. I guess I just like the smack packs so much better for quality I would rather underpitch a smack pack (to a certain extent-the pliney recipe would def push over the threshold of that boundry) of a strain I was really after than pitch 2 sachets of dry. I guess it goes back to the original post that if you have a growler full of slurry, there's significant cell count there and I would just pitch in some sani'd wort for a few hours and roust your fermenter for a a day after if necessary.

beesy said:

Touche. I guess I just like the smack packs so much better for quality I would rather underpitch a smack pack (to a certain extent-the pliney recipe would def push over the threshold of that boundry) of a strain I was really after than pitch 2 sachets of dry. I guess it goes back to the original post that if you have a growler full of slurry, there's significant cell count there and I would just pitch in some sani'd wort for a few hours and roust your fermenter for a a day after if necessary.

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It all depends on strain. If I'm brewing my saison, then yeah... I'm going for a smack pack or I don't brew. Same goes for my APA since I like to use Pacman for that. If I'm making my stout then there's no advantage whatsoever in using a liquid yeast. US05 or US04 is exactly what I want.

And I admit I've never made a starter with my smack packs. Smack, swell and pitch and they've all came out fine. Haven't made anything too high OG though.

Ok, my $0.02. I did (by accident) an experiment on the sugar thing. I had a vial of WLP001, pitched it into some wart, and thought "I could re-use this". So I put a tsp of cane sugar into it, some water, and let it do its thing. I used it on a batch about 3 months later, and it turned out fine.

Just FYI