Brewers Yeast

[duskb]

This is probably the completely wrong forum to ask this but I had to. My wife is making cookies that call for "Brewers Yeast" and she asked to use some of my washed S.F. Ale yeast. I went ahead and gave her what the recipe asked for but I've gotta admit I'm stumped as to how it would do anything. Especially after all of this:

1. The cookie ingredients and dishes are not "sanitized".
2. The sugar content must be minimal compared to beer.
3. The yeasties are going to be cooked dead within 10 minutes.

Any clue as to how this is supposed to work?

 

[Revvy]

This is probably the completely wrong forum to ask this but I had to. My wife is making cookies that call for "Brewers Yeast" and she asked to use some of my washed S.F. Ale yeast. I went ahead and gave her what the recipe asked for but I've gotta admit I'm stumped as to how it would do anything. Especially after all of this:

1. The cookie ingredients and dishes are not "sanitized".
2. The sugar content must be minimal compared to beer.
3. The yeasties are going to be cooked dead within 10 minutes.

Any clue as to how this is supposed to work?

1)Doesn't matter. There's not going to be enough time for an infection to occur.
2)Yeast will eat sugar and fart co2, no matter how miniscule the amount, look at bread, which is another form of fermentation.
3)Look at bread, which is another form of fermentation. It's not the time in the oven that matters. More than likely the recipe requires the dough to rest for a period of time...either in the fridge, or at room temp for a period of time which would give the yeasties enough time to do their thing. But it probably wouldn't take that long for the yeast to eat that minimum amount of sugar to do what it needs to do.

The fourth possibility is that the yeast is more meant for flavoring than any co2 production. Or it is meant to rise a bit and give the cookies a bit of an airy complexity.

The other thing to consider though is what the recipe creator actually meant by brewer's yeast. Did they really mean yeast used in fermenting beer, or something else.

Brewer's yeast outside of what we know it as, is actually also used as a food supplement, and is sold in health food store.

In fact this is what it says from an online vitamin/supplement dealer.

Brewer's yeast contains all the essential amino acids, 14 minerals, and 17 vitamins. It is one of the best natural sources of the B-complex vitamins thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, B6, pantothenic acid, biotin, and folic acid. It is also high in minerals, including chromium, zinc, iron, phosphorus, and selenium. Brewer's yeast is also a good source of protein.

In fact often brewers yeast as sold in healthfood stores is often a dead version of it, it won't ferment. It's been already heated or (gosh, if only they knew) irradiated to prevent fermentation, and just provide those nutrients.

In fact in brewing we often recommend folks go get some "dead" brewer's yeast from a health food store to add to the boil as a yeast energizer or to drop in a fermenter to help stuck fermentation, yeast are by nature, cannibals, and when given dead yeast will often get really excited and eat that and everything in site after.

The trouble with giving washed yeast (I bet the recipe was calling for dry yeast unless it was meant to be a "beer cookie" like beer bread,) is that you might not like your cookies, they may taste too "beery" having been fermented already. So they may actually not be like the recipe was intended to taste like.

 

[duskb]

1)Doesn't matter. There's not going to be enough time for an infection to occur.
2)Yeast will eat sugar and fart co2, no matter how miniscule the amount, look at bread, which is another form of fermentation.
3)Look at bread, which is another form of fermentation. It's not the time in the oven that matters. More than likely the recipe requires the dough to rest for a period of time...either in the fridge, or at room temp for a period of time which would give the yeasties enough time to do their thing. But it probably wouldn't take that long for the yeast to eat that minimum amount of sugar to do what it needs to do.

The fourth possibility is that the yeast is more meant for flavoring than any co2 production. Or it is meant to rise a bit and give the cookies a bit of an airy complexity.

The other thing to consider though is what the recipe creator actually meant by brewer's yeast. Did they really mean yeast used in fermenting beer, or something else.

Brewer's yeast outside of what we know it as, is actually also used as a food supplement, and is sold in health food store.

In fact this is what it says from an online vitamin/supplement dealer.



In fact often brewers yeast as sold in healthfood stores is often a dead version of it, it won't ferment. It's been already heated or (gosh, if only they knew) irradiated to prevent fermentation, and just provide those nutrients.

In fact in brewing we often recommend folks go get some "dead" brewer's yeast from a health food store to add to the boil as a yeast energizer or to drop in a fermenter to help stuck fermentation, yeast are by nature, cannibals, and when given dead yeast will often get really excited and eat that and everything in site after.

The trouble with giving washed yeast (I bet the recipe was calling for dry yeast unless it was meant to be a "beer cookie" like beer bread,) is that you might not like your cookies, they may taste too "beery" having been fermented already. So they may actually not be like the recipe was intended to taste like.

Thanks for the clarification. The recipe was vague but it's intended purpose has something to do with increasing (mothers) milk "lactation". Apparently dark beers help with milk letdown so this is some effort to emulate that on one level or another. I don't know if they are referring to the health food store yeast you mention or not since they are going for the "beer" thing but it's possible. Without understanding the chef's language it's hard to know what they mean when they say to use Brewers Yeast.

She also needed 6 tbs of it and I didn't have that much dry yeast on hand hence why I went with the washed yeast. At $4 a pop those are some damn expensive cookies if I had to buy 6 packets of dry brewers yeast.

She said they didn't taste the same...I also noticed the slight bitterness. Could be anything. Not bad but I don't like oatmeal cookies anyways so it's lost on me.

Whether you use it for bread or for beer. This whole yeast thing is fascinating.

 

[Nurmey]

Go to the grocery store and buy a canister of brewers yeast in the baking section. That is the kind of yeast they are talking about in the recipe.

 

[Revvy]

Thanks for the clarification. The recipe was vague but it's intended purpose has something to do with increasing (mothers) milk "lactation".

Then they are referring to the stuff at the health food store. For all the nutrients mentioned above.

Apparently dark beers help with milk letdown so this is some effort to emulate that on one level or another.

That's actually an old wives tale, and has little true validity. That stems from the old believe that led to the creation of "milk" or "Cream" stouts. Which contained lactose, the unfermentable sugar that came from milk.

Milk stout (also called sweet stout or cream stout) is a stout containing lactose, a sugar derived from milk. Because lactose is unfermentable by beer yeast, it adds sweetness, body, and calories to the finished beer. Milk stout was claimed to be nutritious, and was given to nursing mothers, along with other stouts, such as Guinness. The classic surviving example of milk stout is Mackeson Stout, for which the original brewers claimed that "each pint contains the energising carbohydrates of 10 ounces of pure dairy milk". In the period just after the Second World War when rationing was in place, the British government required brewers to remove the word "milk" from labels and adverts, and any imagery associated with milk.

This article actually traces the history of it.

Raise a toast to the sweet complexity of milk stout

You've gotta love the scientific mind, circa 1877.

An author identified in the French Journal d' Hygiene as A. Chevallier opined that if beer is good for you, and milk is good for you, then beer made with milk instead of water has to be even better. His imagined concoction, La Biere de Lait, would combine the restorative qualities of malt and hops with the nutritional components of milk.

With rock solid logic like that, it's a wonder, in our modern century, we don't drink beer through straws from cartons labeled with pictures of missing kids.

Alas, no one ever devised a palatable milk beer, possibly because brewers found it a lot easier to turn a tap than yank an udder. But they came pretty close with milk stout.

Creamy, wholesome and chocolatey as that glass of Nesquik you used to dunk your Oreos into, milk stout — a.k.a. cream stout or sweet stout — seemingly comes straight from the dairy. Yet, it contains not an ounce of moo-juice.

The story behind its name goes back even earlier than those grand days of 19th-century milk-and-beer experimentation.

It stems from the age-old practice of adding sugar to beer, to create a festive punch or to take the edge off of overly tart or sour beer. Yellowed texts speak of sweetening beer with honey or nectar.

In an 1869 treatise, "Cups and their Customs" (Roberts and Porter), there is a description of the "Freemasons Cup," which consisted of a pint of Scotch ale, a pint of mild, a half pint of brandy, a pint of sherry and a half-pound of sugar. The practice lives even today, in the small children who stir teaspoons of sugar into their low-alcohol Faro at Brussels' famed Café Mort Subite.

Sugar, however, had another benefit: added calories. The medical literature of the 19th century is filled with advice to feed sweetened beer — especially dark and rich stout — to the pale and sickly. Whether the patient had tuberculosis or was simply pregnant, those extra pounds couldn't hurt; if nothing else, the booze certainly dulled the pain.

From that standpoint, A. Chevallier hardly sounds like a crackpot. Indeed, it was only a matter of time 'til someone wondered: If brewing beer with milk is out of the question, what if you simply added the essence of milk?

The essence, these deep-thinkers suggested, is lactose — milk sugar.

By the end of the century, several competing scientists had filed for patents for some type of lactose-spiked beer. The idea leaped from theory to practice in 1907, when the Mackeson brewery in England bottled the first milk stout, labeled with an old-fashioned creamery churn.

"Each pint," Mackeson slickly claimed, "contains the energising carbohydrates of 10 ounces of pure dairy milk."

One hundred years later, the curative value of sweetened beer has been mostly debunked. We know that lactose contains none of the important fats or proteins (the true essence) of milk, and carbs are a dirty word.

But that doesn't make milk stout any less a marvel. Lactose will not ferment with typical beer yeast, so its latent sweetness balances the dark ale's roasted malts, typically with a creamy body. Other similar sweet stouts achieve the same quality with sucrose.

Even if it isn't quite La Biere de Lait, surely a pint of richly complex Duck Rabbit Milk Stout from North Carolina or lusciously creamy Lancaster Milk Stout from Pennsylvania is exactly what the doctor ordered.

 

[artyboy]

If the recipe calls for brewers yeast then it certainly means the health food variety. Any recipe that calls for active beer brewing yeast will specify the variety. Next time she asks for it just give her the yeast cake from your last batch.

 

[Marsdude]

For many years now my wife and I have used brewers yeast (health food type) on our popcorn. It really adds to the flavor. We picked up the habit when we lived near Eugene Oregon. A little art theater there offered it as an add on to there popcorn. We tried it and have been hooked since.

 

[zeptrey]

Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but what problems if any would there be if we were to use an expired or about to expire dry yeast packet for these cookies? I have a ton of Us 05 and a bunch of old Notty in the fridge. The wife is producing milk but this kid feeds like a vacuum, and we've read that these cookies really help. Any ideas if this would be safe to give my wife?