Yeast As Nutrient

[Rizzla]

Hi compliments of the season to all, hope you have a great brew ready to crack.

I was wondering if anyone had some thoughts on this idea.

My wife has been cleaning out the cupboard and found some old bread yeast sachets not too old (packaged in 2009) I reckon I could maybe boil up a sachet with my hops to provide a yeast nutrient. I have never used a nutrient and never had a bad brew so not sure if this addittion would help or hinder. I generally use dry and liquid malts, bit of crystal or heritage or cara and some dex and corn syrup and play around with the hops

So do I have a chance of messing up or improving if I were to try the old yeast as a nutrient or should I leave well enough alone.

Thanks for any suggestions and cheers

 

[kymba]

i think you only need to use nutrients where there are no goodies for the yeast to effectively replicate/reproduce - like cider, 100% dextrose washes h34r: wines and oztops

that being said, pretty sure dry yeast is packaged with nutrient so it fires when you pitch it...like how dry yeast will start a non aerated nochill no problems, but you need to do a starter if you are going to use a liquid yeast

 

[Thirsty Boy]

it might well not help much - but then again, it aint gonna hurt any either. Chuck a teaspoon of it in with your hops when you have a minute or two to go in your boil and see if it makes a difference you can notice.

 

[MHB]

The old Soylent Green discussion ...again
Yeast if fully digested (broken down so its available as nutrient) would provide some useful nutrition, but its no more a balanced diet for yeast than pured people would be for you or I.
There is no way that if your wort was deficient in zinc (and a lot of Australian malt is) that any reasonable amount of yeast would fix the problem; same applies to most of the other trace elements.
There are several commercial Yeast Food products on the market, these supply all the nutrients that yeast might be missing and are very inexpensive.
The one I stock sells for 5 cents a gram*; the recommended dose is 4g/100L so 1g or 5 cents in a 25 litre brew. A pretty small investment if you are concerned about the level of nutrients in your brew.
Mark


*I think all the Retailers here sell the same or similar products; its too late at night for me to be bothered going and checking everyones price like I usually do so dont get your knickers in a bunch will you nick.
m