Starter with maple syrup

[Clearwall]

I figured, "why the hell not, right?" Making a dunkel tomorrow and since I have about a half of a bag of light DME and a quarter bag of a dark DME(not really enough to make an effective starter out of either) I thought about what else I could use. Had two full bottles of syrup so thought that might be fun. Anyone else done this before? What was it like?

 

[m00ps]

I wouldnt recommend making a starter out of any kind of simple sugar or syrup. It trains the yeast to get lazy and they will likely not perform as well at attenuating your beer

Its like feeding a pet food every day then just releasing it into the wild. Its hasnt been trained to hunt for itself. The yeast get used to gouging themselves on the simple sugars and the subseuqent generations cant process the more complex malt szugars as easily

 

[Gavin C]

The simple sugar starter will not up-regulate the yeast-genes responsible for the metabolism of maltose. If anything it may down-regugate them leading to an unhealthy fermentation.

What kind of dilution of the maple syrup are you planning. You'd still want to shoot for a SG of ~1.040

There is also a huge missing piece of a starter with simple sugars. No yeast nutrient that would otherwise be provided by the malt extract.

For a lager fermentation I'm all for stacking the deck in favor of a boring trouble-free fermentation.

I would not do what you propose. However I have no experience with making a simple sugar starter.

From Mr. Malty

Use an all malt wort for starters. The sugar in the starter needs to be maltose, not simple sugar. Yeast that have been eating a lot of simple sugars stop making the enzyme that enable it to break down maltose, which is the main sugar in wort. The yeast quickly learn to be lazy and the ability to fully attenuate a batch of beer suffers.

More useful but inconlusive data

http://brulosophy.com/2015/06/05/real-wort-vs-dextrose-yeast-starter-exbeeriment-results/

 

[m00ps]

LOL, much more substantial concrete reasoning than mine

but yeah youd be better off using some of the extract for the starter and adding maple syrup to the beer

 

[Clearwall]

Hmm...what if I add some yeast nutrient to it? Was planning on brewing tomorrow night so I still have some time.

 

[Snicklefritz]

How big of a starter are you trying to make? 1/2lb of DME is more than enough for a 2L starter.