Yeast Nutrient

[teddyearp]

Before I found this site, I just used somebody's links to buy some of the 'stuff' I/we use for cider. Now after cruising this site, I've found that there's a few variants for some of these ingredients.

The nutrient I ended up with is (and I'll massacre the spelling) Dimonium Phoshphate.

Is that the 'good' one?

 

[bernardsmith]

Diammonium phosphate is what wine makers know as DAP and while nitrogen and phosphate are essential for yeast health they are not really sufficient (and it is not clear that the DAP provides organic nitrogen which is better). If you cannot get something like lab produced Fermaid O or K then what you can certainly do is take a teaspoon of bakers yeast and allow it to rehydrate for a few minutes in a little water and then boil that water and yeast mixture in your microwave to kill the yeast. When cool you can feed this to the yeast in your must. Yeast also love vitamin B.

 

[teddyearp]

Hmm, now I might have a good use for that fleischmanns I bought before I read about better yeasts after all.

Many thanks!

 

[bernardsmith]

Lab cultured yeast highlight or mask flavors in wines, though some, like champagne yeasts do not do anything but rip through sugar without adding anything to the flavor profile of the wine (technically, I think, champagne yeast was developed to add to a finished wine with a high ABV to which you want to add a tiny amount of sugar to make the wine sparkling rather than still). Bread yeast will ferment must and wort but the flavor profile it produces is better for bread than it is for an alcoholic drink.

 

[Blacksmith1]

Bread yeast works ok for mead. Most home brew shops have several (at least 2) brands of nutrient in stock. Try looking there.

 

[bernardsmith]

Bread yeast works ok for mead. Most home brew shops have several (at least 2) brands of nutrient in stock. Try looking there.

When you say bread yeast works OK for mead, this is by whose estimation? And when you say that it works OK do you mean that sure, bread yeast can ferment honey without any problem or do you mean that the flavors and mouthfeel that bread yeast produce are the gold standard for any mead? Which Mazer Cup awards have ever been awarded to a mead made with bread yeast? Which commercial mead makers use bread yeast?

 

[Blacksmith1]

Really? Plain English. It. Works. Ok. Not " it's the greatest thing since sliced bread" or any other outrageous claims.
It makes a drinkable, simple, repeatable mead.
I have no idea which awards have been won or awarded by whom. I have tried products that have won awards that did not impress me and others that amazed me. So for the most part I ignore the "We won this award" stickers on products.
I agree that proper wine/ale/cider yeasts will do a better job, but bread yeasts, which are available anywhere in the world, do work was my point.
Sorry if this seems a bit short, haven't had my coffee yet.

 

[teddyearp]

Diammonium phosphate is what wine makers know as DAP and while nitrogen and phosphate are essential for yeast health they are not really sufficient (and it is not clear that the DAP provides organic nitrogen which is better). If you cannot get something like lab produced Fermaid O or K then what you can certainly do is take a teaspoon of bakers yeast and allow it to rehydrate for a few minutes in a little water and then boil that water and yeast mixture in your microwave to kill the yeast. When cool you can feed this to the yeast in your must. Yeast also love vitamin B.

Lab cultured yeast highlight or mask flavors in wines, though some, like champagne yeasts do not do anything but rip through sugar without adding anything to the flavor profile of the wine (technically, I think, champagne yeast was developed to add to a finished wine with a high ABV to which you want to add a tiny amount of sugar to make the wine sparkling rather than still). Bread yeast will ferment must and wort but the flavor profile it produces is better for bread than it is for an alcoholic drink.

OK, now I am confused. In the first quote you suggest a process for bread yeast to use in place of the nutrient I have on hand. Then in the second quote you suggest it may impart flavors I may not want, i.e. bread. I am not making mead, but apple cider from store bought juice. Albeit this time from something a bit better than Great Value Juice from concentrate. And to add, I plan on using S-04 instead of the EC-1118 I've used on many of my batches.

At the end of the day, Blacksmith1's sig line speaks volumes, hehe.

 

[Blacksmith1]

My bad, I'm the one who brought mead into it I think. Shouldn't drink and post I guess.

In post 1 He was talking about killing the bread yeast to use as a feed for your wine/cider yeast.

Post 2 Used to ferment, yes it can leave flavors behind you may not want. Especially in a cider, I would think... Now I have to do a gallon to see what it does in cider.. Dang it!

 

[Maylar]

DAP is the traditional nutrient to use with cider. 1 gm per gallon works for me.

 

[bernardsmith]

When you kill the yeast and use it as yeast nutrient that yeast is not doing any of the fermenting. It is quite dead. More than that the cells have all spilled their guts - quite literally and its their guts that the living yeast is eating.

When you pitch living yeast to ferment the sugars that is when the yeast you pitch have an effect on flavors and viscosity. There is absolutely nothing I said that was contradictory. There is the living yeast you pitch which CAN have a positive or a negative or a neutral effect on flavor and there is the nutrients you add which in this example are made up of dead yeast cells for the living yeast to absorb.

 

[CKuhns]

Great discussion. However, cider has enough nutrients on it's own. I never add additional and really don't see the need for any additional.

 

[teddyearp]

When you kill the yeast and use it as yeast nutrient that yeast is not doing any of the fermenting. It is quite dead. More than that the cells have all spilled their guts - quite literally and its their guts that the living yeast is eating.

When you pitch living yeast to ferment the sugars that is when the yeast you pitch have an effect on flavors and viscosity. There is absolutely nothing I said that was contradictory. There is the living yeast you pitch which CAN have a positive or a negative or a neutral effect on flavor and there is the nutrients you add which in this example are made up of dead yeast cells for the living yeast to absorb.

Well this is a forum about making drinks, so . . . . . plus I'm half Polish, so I can be easily confused. Thank you so much for the sage information.

 

[blasterooni]

Diammonium phosphate is what wine makers know as DAP and while nitrogen and phosphate are essential for yeast health they are not really sufficient (and it is not clear that the DAP provides organic nitrogen which is better). If you cannot get something like lab produced Fermaid O or K then what you can certainly do is take a teaspoon of bakers yeast and allow it to rehydrate for a few minutes in a little water and then boil that water and yeast mixture in your microwave to kill the yeast. When cool you can feed this to the yeast in your must. Yeast also love vitamin B.

I crush up one 100mg tab of vitB for every gallon of juice. I did notice a difference in yeast happiness when I started this practice

 

[blasterooni]

Great discussion. However, cider has enough nutrients on it's own. I never add additional and really don't see the need for any additional.

If using the kveik strains, definitely use nutes, and double the recommended amount. Since it ferments at a high temp, and very quickly, they need the nutes otherwise you get the rhino farts. I started playing with the SNA method for kveik this last round, and it seemed to work pretty well.
Apparently, apples can be low in nitrogen, and depending on the particular yeasts nitrogen requirements, some addition of yeast nutrient might be in order. I would recommend that if you are going to add yeast nutrient go with fermaid O as DAP mitigates the yeasts ester production, at least that is what I have read or heard here and elsewhere.

 

[GeneDaniels1963]

Great discussion. However, cider has enough nutrients on it's own. I never add additional and really don't see the need for any additional.

Last batch I made was very slow to start, so I added nutrient. It went wild and made a mess over and over. So I will avoid nutrients whenever possible.

 

[bernardsmith]

If when you added nutrients your carboy exploded like a volcano that was because of the nucleating effect that tiny particles have in liquid in the presence of gas (CO2). To prevent these volcanoes you simply have to make certain that the nutrients are completely dissolved in liquid and that there are no particles to nucleate the gas (nucleation enables much larger bubbles to form and those bubbles push up a column of liquid above them and that column is then rifled through the narrow neck of the carboy creating havoc and misery.

 

[MarkKF]

Great discussion. However, cider has enough nutrients on it's own. I never add additional and really don't see the need for any additional.

I disagree. I always use nutrients and have good results. No stalls, no rhino farts. Cider might have enough but just enough with temp. control.

 

[blasterooni]

Last batch I made was very slow to start, so I added nutrient. It went wild and made a mess over and over. So I will avoid nutrients whenever possible.

I always start with a blow off tube straight into distilled water in a sanitized container. It's a good way to "top harvest" when using a carboy. Then, I crash it, rinse once, and add it to 1.040 wort in an erhlenmeyer flask on a stir plate (a recent activity compelled by the need to save my opshaug kveik; seems someone tossed it thinking it was something else apparently). I've also ran my blow off tube straight into 1.040 sugar water, which was kind of interesting, just to see what would happen. I may be 50, but the weird little kid reigns supreme when it comes to messing with stuff.