Anyone use yeast nutrient?

[Galena]

I have some White Labs yeast nutrient, I don't use it on all brews but at half a teaspoon a brew its quite economical, my next brew is with Ringwood yeast and I will use it with that.

 

[alfajerry]

Is that from dark rock then mate or somewhere else , haven’t heard of that one before

I think 'Furnace' forgot the 's'.
Harris Pure Brew

 

[RichK]

Harris was the previous name for Dark Rock (same shop!)

 

[The Furnace Green Brewer]

Is that from dark rock then mate or somewhere else , haven’t heard of that one before

Hi it should have read 'harris pure brew' from most homebrew shops.

 

[Knuckles]

Is that from dark rock then mate or somewhere else , haven’t heard of that one before

Its Harris Pure Brew, it works to eliminate Chloramine and Chlorine from your brewing water, which could otherwise react with the yeast during fermentation. It also claims to feed the yeast. I use it to get rid of that 'homebrew taste'. Get it from lovebrewing.co.uk or the homebrew shop.co.uk
It's about £3.75.

 

[Paul Roberts]

I've used Harris pure brew which I bought from the homebrew shop farnborough. I have found it has helped reduce twang. This could be the water treatment side or the nutrient. Either way if it helps reduce stress on the yeast I'm in

 

[Redwulf]

I use 1/2 teaspoon or so of CML Nutrient when the situation demands, most notably when using Kveik or Philly Sour yeasts

 

[bobukbrewer]

I use a tip of nutrient and a tip of vitamin C in my starters - supplementary question - can you use wine nutrient in beer ?

 

[ssashton]

The problem with using wine nutrients and the usual homebrew nutrients is that they tend to be DAP based which is not what you want for most beers. See this
https://www.brewersjournal.info/free-amino-nitrogen/

Really interesting article! It helps explain why a beer I did recently that had a lot of adjuncts which although converted well to sugars, was difficult to ferment. Probably exacerbated by the recipe using Kevik yeast which is super aggressive.

 

[An Ankoù]

Its Harris Pure Brew, it works to eliminate Chloramine and Chlorine from your brewing water, which could otherwise react with the yeast during fermentation. It also claims to feed the yeast. I use it to get rid of that 'homebrew taste'. Get it from lovebrewing.co.uk or the homebrew shop.co.uk
It's about £3.75.

I've just read about that on behalf of a mate who wants to try a partial mash kit: a Dark Rock Tribute to Batham's Bitter.
The instructions wouldn't work: The chloramine needs to be removed from the water BEFORE the hops are boiled in it otherwise chlorophenols will form. The instructions and the little video show crushing the tablet between two spoons and adding it, together with the nutrient, just before pitching. Moreover, the ingredients list doesn't contain anything that would remove chlorophenol so I guess it's just the list of ingredients in the nutrients pack.
Can anyone shed any light on this????

 

[allotment_fox]

I tend to use yeast nutrient if I have some hanging around I make wine normally once a year which I use a fresh batch in, then future beer brewing I use it up until its empty

 

[ssashton]

I use the malt miller repack of this SERVOMYCES | Lallemand Brewing

You use 0.01g per litre, so the repack of 30g lasts for many years.

I'd just double that dose for kviek, although I am unsure what nutrients they actually need over normal beer yeasts.

The problem with using wine nutrients and the usual homebrew nutrients is that they tend to be DAP based which is not what you want for most beers. See this
https://www.brewersjournal.info/free-amino-nitrogen/

Actually I'm not sure what you suggest the issue is with DAP (diammonium phosphate)? Google says it is a source of nitrogen, which is exactly what your quoted article says is required for full fermentation.

Are you referring to the section that says 150mg/L minimum and 200-250mg/L is ideal (but too much can cause off flavours from too fast fermentation) while tests show all grain IPA had 250mg/L and double strength IPA had 316mg/L. So you suggest no addition is needed?

 

[CraigInTheCorn]

Always. Very inexpensive insurance.

 

[AlDaviz]

Malt miller sells the sevomyces nutrient..6 capsules for ã6.82...one capsule is enough for up to 25 litres.

I’ve always used this with mj yeasts since I started bemrewing

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Pick up this old thread. I'm brewing the Cashmere DDH recipe from Malt Miller.

It uses Kveik yeast at 35c so is a strong fermentation. The recipe calls for "Boil additions: 10 mins Yeast Nutrient x 2"

What does that mean? I would usually not use any nutrient so x2 means nothing to me.

Use it at double the rate the manufacturers recommend for beer - as seen from this thread, different products are used at different rates. But you want to be generous in this case because you're using kveik in a low-gravity wort, and kveik needs feeding. This article from Escarpment suggests kveiks generally consume around 180ppm FAN (ie a lot) when fermenting a 1.053 wort at 20C.

I now use yeast nutrient in all my beers. If it's not necessary, then it doesn't do any harm either.

The one thing you've got to be careful of is nutrient containing zinc, as the optimum window for zinc is quite narrow and it's easy to overdo zinc. Eg De Nicola & Walker 2018 on lager fermentation "Zinc impacted fermentation performance, with wort zinc levels required for optimal fermentation ranging from 0.48 to 1.07 ppm...Flavor congener profiles appeared to be affected only at high zinc levels of 10 ppm, with elevated concentrations of higher alcohols and some esters (ethyl caproate and isoamyl acetate) observed". Don't get too hung up on those exact numbers, read them as more than 0.05ppm and less than 4.85ppm. Those numbers came from Raffaele De Nicola who had previously done an entire PhD on zinc and yeast funded by Heineken so again looking at lager yeast. From memory ale yeasts prefer a bit more, something like 2-5 ppm?

Yeast health is something that most homebrewers don't pay enough attention to, even when they're getting stuck ferments and strange smells in their beer. One of the most convincing arguments for looking after your yeasties is looking at the journey Cloudwater went on with their DIPA recipes between 2016 and 2018, as discussed in this blog article and the linked recipes. It looks like their recipe is scaled for around 20hl final volume, so for convenience I'll divide their numbers by 100 to get a homebrew scale.

In 2016 their DIPA v3 had around 2g of "yeast vitamins" (I suspect one of the varieties of Murphy's Yeast Vit?) and 0.28g Koppakleer (carrageenan) in the whirlpool and 1.4g of Clarex in the fermenter.

By 2018 they were adding 0.8g yeast vitamins and 0.24g Koppakleer in the whirlpool, along with some old yeast and 2.6g of valine in the whirlpool, they were no longer using Clarex but were adding in the fermenter 1.6g of yeast vitamins, 0.013g (0.65ppm) of "zinc" (sulphate??) and 1 g of ALDC (alpha acetolactate decarboxylase).

ALDC and valine are to satisfy their obsession with preventing diacetyl - apparently one of the Cloudwater guys is/was a diacetyl supertaster so they are paranoid about getting rid of it.

All organisms need a supply of valine, which is a branched-chain amino acid that is made by the ILV pathway (along with leucine and isoleucine). One of the intermediaries in the production of valine by this pathway is alpha-acetolactate, which leaks out into the wort and is converted into diacetyl. ALDC is an enzyme that breaks down alpha-acetolactate (AAL). However if you break down all the AAL then you're left with no valine, so you need to supplement with valine.

Also as often happens in the regulation of biochemical pathways, the ILV pathway is inhibited by the presence of its product, in this case valine. So more valine means less AAL and so less diacetyl. But you can't just throw lots of FAN at the problem because the other amino acids compete with valine for entry into the yeast cell, you need a relative surplus of valine.

See this 2013 review by suregork and his supervisor for more detail than you could want on diacetyl production :
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jib.84
Interestingly it seems that the ancestral Chico had a bat1 mutation which specifically affects valine synthesis, a mutation that the 1056/US-05 group retains but which was repaired in the WLP001 group. So you might expect the two groups of Chicos to respond differently to ALDC and valine.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Whilst looking for something else I came across this old presentation from Lallemand which has some data on eg the effect of zinc and Servomyces, and talks in general about yeast nutrition :
https://web.archive.org/web/2019071.../Tobias-Fischborn-NHC2009-Yeast nutrition.pdf
They give the example of a brewery that saw diacetyl cut by over 40% and fermentation speed increase 50% with nutrient.

 

[BlackRegent]

Does anyone have experience on using yeast from previous batches as yeast nutrient? If so, do they have reliable information on dosing rates and risks to be aware of?

As I recycle yeast through overbuilding starters, all my post-fermentation yeast goes down the plug hole, which always brings a tear to my eye as it seems such a waste.

 

[UKSkydiver]

Does anyone have experience on using yeast from previous batches as yeast nutrient? If so, do they have reliable information on dosing rates and risks to be aware of?

As I recycle yeast through overbuilding starters, all my post-fermentation yeast goes down the plug hole, which always brings a tear to my eye as it seems such a waste.

I asked a similar question.

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/fv-slurry-as-yeast-nutrient.92332/

 

[Agentgonzo]

Brewing beer shouldn't need yeast nutrient because the wort itself is full of nutrients for the yeast (wine/cider/mead must doesn't, which is why you add nutrient and also why you don't get yeast nutrient for sale for beer (it's unnecessary)).

In fact, listening to brulosophy podcasts where they talk with people from Imperial Yeast, Imperial just uses DME to grow/culture their yeast for sale. Even they don't add yeast nutrient!

 

[hedgerowpete]

old yeast nuitriants were vitamin B6 and DAP, diammonium phosphate, sugar and oxygen