The cheapest and best starter?

I've often pushed back brewing a week or so because I thought I had DME for a starter and then didn't. But, then again, going to a LHBS isn't as big of a pain in the ass for me as it can be for a lot of folks. I try to keep a 3# bag of wheat DME on hand for starters, though.

Why wouldn't you open up a new bag if you had it? I frequently make all-DME beers (simple, low-gravity, and pale), and just adjust to a slightly lower OG to account for the little bit I take out for starters.

 

In brewing (and most things in life), the cheapest way is very rarely the best way.

 

I sometimes will have a batch that I will collect a little extra sparge runnings. I just put it in mason jars and freeze. When I need a starter, all I have to do is thaw, boil, and chill. It's not just cheap, it's free, and it's not too much work.

 

If your time is not worth much, mash some malt, boil the wort, chill, pitch the yeast. It is just a small batch of beer.

 

What you wrote is, indeed, true. Making a starter with simple sugars only (honey is mostly glucose and fructose, but varies by varietal), is going to acclimate your yeast to that type of environment and since wort is not mostly simple sugars, they will eventually have trouble fermenting disaccharides.

 

Why are you trying so hard to sell us on this? You already do/did this simple sugar starter but there is no reason to post bad advice on here.

 

There are multiple issues concerning making a starter using just simple sugars.

The topic of enzyme production was already mentioned but permit me to quote:

“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.”

http://www.mrmalty.com/starter_faq.php

There is also the issue of proper yeast nutrition - a simple sugar starter lacks proper nutrition value for yeast growth.

Again, permit me to quote: “Key nutrients include oxygen, zinc, amino acids, and nitrogen.” A simple sugar starter does not provide these needed nutrients.

As regards ‘science’ perhaps you would find this Brulosophy exBEERiment a useful read:

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

Below is an extract from the discussion section.

| DISCUSSION |

Despite the lack of significant results, this xBmt made it clear to me that the advice against using a dextrose starter is more than just urban legend. By most observable metrics, it seriously under-performed and did not contribute anything of value to the brew day or resultant beer. Consider the following observations:

• The dextrose starter took 2.5 times longer than the real wort starter to fully ferment out.
• Once pitched, the dextrose starter batch took 10 hours longer for fermentation activity to appear.
• The dextrose starter batch took an agonizingly long 3 weeks to reach FG.
• The dextrose starter beer was cloudier and far less visually appealing than the real wort starter beer.

Even if the finished beers were characteristically exactly the same, I see no reason to recommend making a starter using 100% dextrose. Real wort produced from mashed grains or malt extract just seems to work better– it’s faster to start, quicker to finish, and doesn’t smell like a freshly opened a bottle of KC Masterpiece.

Cheers!

 

Honey is a terrible source of complex sugars. It doesn't contain very much Maltose, and AFAIK no Maltotriose at all.

It's not about evolution. It's about short term survival strategy. Yeast assess their environment and make the appropriate enzymes and transporters. If they don't "see" significant amounts of maltose/maltotriose, they won't get ready to use them.

 

I am in the camp that sees this as not the best idea. I don't want to pile on, but brown sugar is basically sucrose + molasses, and molasses is really high in iron - an ingredient brewers generally want to avoid.

My advice is to do starters with wort, whether from DME or second runnings or whatever.

 

Additionally, yeast preferentially use glucose as a carbon source, so it really isn't that difficult to convince them to not want to use anything else.

 

As others said, the honey isn't helping in the way you think it is. And don't forget the micro drop of olive oil!

Those of us who have been around for a few years will get the olive oil reference. But they'll also recall that several years back there were threads about using Malta (Goya product) in place of starters. Apparently it worked. I could see myself using this trick if I ran out of DME, since my nearest LHBS requires 4 hours of driving. However, I'm not sure I can find Malta around here, either. I have seen some brown rice syrup at a upscale organic grocers (slightly shorter drive for me), and I wouldn't be surprised if I saw barley syrups too. Not sure what sugars would be in the brown rice stuff.

As for the stuff about raising yeasts on a malt diet, it smacks a little of the sort of dogma that the Brulosophy team questions. I suspect at a homebrew scale, for the right beers, you could get away with it. But maybe with bigger beers, you would see something different happen? I really don't know. If the yeast can stop creating enzymes and such because they became adapted to a simple sugar environment, wouldn't they eventually re-adapt to the more complex wort? Assuming they can figure it out, maybe you get some lag times, maybe by forcing yeast to build new cellular and molecular machinery, you get some undesirable metabolic byproducts?

It's interesting, but doesn't seem like best practice. You can often get away with not following best practice, but you are taking a bigger risk. Whether that risk get realized or not may be a matter of chance, by which I mean lots of other variables that you are not considering or controlling as well as you think. Like not wearing your seatbelt.

 

I only use dme for starters so when I get a 3 lb bad I just weigh it into sandwich bags and throw them in the freezer. Seems to keep the dme fresh

 

But here is your opportunity to contribute some 'science' to the homebrewing community. Why not try brewing a batch (or two or three or...) using a starter made using simple sugars. How will you know whether this "affordable starter" 'works' or not? You can also educate the rest of us homebrewers on how your "affordable starter" 'worked' unders multiple conditions.

It is entirely acceptable for you to be: "I'm still not convinced". But rather than demanding proof from the BA homebrewing community why not make some effort here. I am sure that others besides me would like to hear your experiences over multiple batches on how your "affordable starter" 'works'.

Cheers to you making some effort here!!!

P.S. You can even contact the Brulosophy folks and have your experiments documented on their website.