starter...theory, idea, question

[jsciacca]

research shows to begin a starter with sugar water or something similar along the lines of a sweetened water, correct?

--what kind of affects would there be to just use a simple syrup or pancake syrup, etc...something on thick side. add maybe a little water to fluidize it a bit. would that be just way too much sugars to start?

 

[BBL_Brewer]

use DME to make your starter. You want a similar sugar profile to that or your wort.

 

[Phunhog]

use DME to make your starter. You want a similar sugar profile to that or your wort.

Exactly! You want your yeast to be well adapted to "eat" maltose and not so much the simple sugars.

 

[bottlebomber]

Fructose and sucrose (pancake syrup and white sugar) are very easy for the yeast to process. By the time the time yeast are pitched it will be much more likely that you will have a stuck fermentation or at least that they don't attenuate as completely as they would have. Otherwise everyone would be doing it, because sugar is obviously much cheaper than DME

 

[elpenoso]

Which research would that be?

 

[jetmac]

research shows to begin a starter with sugar water or something similar along the lines of a sweetened water, correct?

The answer to this would be, no.

You can add yeast to simple sugar and you will get "beer" or alcohol but it would not be drinkable.

In a nutshell(and I suggest you do more research)

There are sort of 3 reasons for a starter

1. To "wake up" your yeast and let them stretch their legs before they have to get to work. This takes 5-6 hours
2. To pitch at high krausen and cut down on lag time. This takes 12-15 hours
3. To multiply or "grow" yeast. This cuts down on how many yeast packs you have to buy and also helps develop flavor character. This takes many hours depending on how many yeast you want to grow.

It's about the yeast, not about the alcohol they produce. Using simple sugars would only serve to produce alcohol and in turn make the yeast lazy. Yes I think they would multiply somewhat, but they would be all screwed up.They need complex sugars to do what we want them to do to our beer.