Yeast nutrient

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Yeast nutrient

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Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 05 11:23 am Post subject: Yeast nutrient
My wines seem to take a long time to ferment and I know people add nutrients to their brews. So, what are they? Are they natural, chemical and do they work? Is there anything I can use from the store cupboard or grow myself?

jema
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28120
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 05 11:30 am Post subject: Re: Yeast nutrient

Treacodactyl wrote:

My wines seem to take a long time to ferment and I know people add nutrients to their brews.

So, what are they? Are they natural, chemical and do they work? Is there anything I can use from the store cupboard or grow myself?

Marmite works well reputably, full of VitiminB.

I am wondering a lot about this area as well

I use TRONO a commerical nutrient, but mine still takre along time for the Country wines. But the kits ferment out in under a month.

I have been wondering if this is a lot less to do with nutrition and a lot more to do with pushing the Alcohol level.

A kit wine may start out at SG1090 and give you 12% by volume.

Kick off a Country wine at say 1105 then you have 14.1% as the potential.

But the yeast which will make short work of 1090 is now being poisoned by the alcohol and hence will work a lot lot slower.

I am thinking of taking the suger levels down somewhat and see what the effect is.

Blue Peter

Joined: 21 Mar 2005
Posts: 2400
Location: Milton Keynes

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 05 12:53 pm Post subject:

This is taken from the UK home brewers email list, and may be of interest, (no personal experience, I'm afraid, and I don't know quite how it applies to wine):

I've used it [Tronozymol] in the past and its ok, as an all grain brewer yeast nutrient is not an essential, but it does help so I use it.

Given some evidence that I've see from brewers in the US something that might be worth having a look at is Servomyces (Available from all Brupaks suppliers). This is a yeast aid (Based on a yeast product), that boosts zinc levels within the wort. Evidence (Scientific, Commercial and Craft) has shown that it has a very positive effect on wort fermentation. Of course those of us using Yeast Aid (I am not one

) which is a yeast based product with added Zinc Sulphate are already getting that benefit. And for those chemical brewers amongst us (I hold my hand up here ;-') ) forget about boosting Zinc levels in your wort with Zinc Sulphate unless you can measure it down to the 1 MICROGRAM per litre of wort! Much above that point and you stand a good chance of degrading yeast performance, its toxic!.

Peter.

cab

Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429

Posted: Tue Apr 26, 05 9:46 pm Post subject:

Duffers guide to basic microbiology party 2; or the Cab approach to Homebrew part whatever. This is how I find my way about homebrew.

The following letters may help:

CHONSP

All living things need them. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorous; they actually need a whole shedload of other elements too, but they're the biggies.

Carbon for your yeast comes in the form of sugar; they also get their hydrogen that way, they also can pick up some oxygen that way, but also from solution. Sulfur is pretty much something you never need to worry about, but nitrogen is a swine, and phosporous can be an issue too.

Yeast isn't really all that good at extracting nitrogen from the environment; protein is packed full of nitrogen, but yeast isn't good at protein. Grapes have a wee bit of available soluble nitrogen, so grape juice is ideal. Some other fruits, and especially flowers, have tit all available soluble nitrogen, so you need to add some. If you don't, you're restricting the maximum population of yeast based on how much free nitrogen source is there; you're imposting a troublesome growth limiting nutrient. So remove it.

Your most 'natural' source is probably grape juice. Failing that, use raisins. Yeast nutrient is basically ammonium phosphate (the ammonium being the nitrogen source, the phosphate being a useful added bonus). Another trick is to use marmite, which is a great nitrogen source. You can sometimes find powdered yeast extract in wholefood shops (or you used to), and that's even better as it has no salt in it.

I use yeast nutrient. It's cheap, you only need a little, and it has no real impact on the flavour. That's ideal for my purposes, and it's something you can't say of any of the other alternatives.

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