What are some good yeast nutrients for pale ales and IPAs?
Unlike wine and mead, yeast nutrients are not required for beer.
I like to use Fermax at 2 Tbsp per 5 gal batch. The results I’ve seen are vigorous ferments that finish quickly and completely.
I use Wyeast nutrient at the recommended rate.
That’s all I use.
Same here
Same here on Wyeast Nutrient - 1/2 teaspoon for 5 gallons and 1 teaspoon for 10 gallon batches. Seems to be cheap insurance that the minerality needs of the yeast are going to be met.
That’s the conclusion I’ve come to based on my experience. I used to use Wyeast nutrient in every beer, except when I forgot (which was rather often). I never noticed any difference when I forgot to use it. I generally don’t bother with it any more. FWIW - I use dry yeast ~75% of the time, but I haven’t noticed a difference in performance the times I’ve used liquid yeast without nutrient, either.
Probably 80 to 90% of the beer I brew is brewed with harvested yeast - nutrient as said before is cheap insurance.
I re-pitch yeast quite regularly and a few generations out, so the yeast seem to be vigorous using yeast nutrient. I don’t trust not using it at this point, except possibly on the original pitch…
Just don’t smell the stuff.
ZnSO₄ x 7H₂O is where its at. 
Still a pretty inexperienced home brewer and I’ve yet to see much of a difference between adding a nutrient or not. I think I’ve got bigger problems to sort out first before I start pumping my wort full of performance enhancers 
You know, like proper pitching rate and temperature control. One day I hope have a beer that doesn’t immediately smell like nail polish…
OTOH, nutrient is so inexpensive and easy I look at it as cheap insurance.
Shout-out to you for having this mindset. It’s a good one to have as you are figuring out what is most important to pay attention to, vs. those small details that are less of a priority until the big-picture stuff is dialed in. I know too many brewers who, for example, stress over HSA but make beers that are loaded with off-flavors.
I used yeast nutrient when I first started, but stopped using it for anything culturing media after moving to all-grain brewing. I stopped using it for culturing media (shortly thereafter). I have personally have never seen the need for yeast nutrient in a all-grain wort. There is more than nitrogen available in an all malt wort, even in 20% adjunct worts. The other major component of yeast nutrient blends is a yeast extract. That is helpful if one is underpitching.
Nail polish is ethyl acetate. It is almost always the result of fermentation temperate being too high during the exponential growth period in home brewing. If you want to understand what is going on better, you should read two of my blog entries.
Yeast Cultures are Like Nuclear Weapons (Yeast Cultures are Like Nuclear Weapons | Experimental Brewing)
Have You Seen Ester (Have You Seen Ester? | Experimental Brewing)
The need for yeast nutrient is largely dependent upon your water source and its quality. The main potential deficiency that yeast nutrient addresses is zinc deficiency. Malt does not provide enough zinc to make up for water sources that are deficient. Deficient water sources are RO water, distilled water, and potentially any source that hasn’t had much ground contact such as collected rainwater or mountain runoff.
There was a mention of zinc sulfate previously in this thread and it is almost a good alternative. Its problem is that the dosage rate with that salt is exceedingly low. You probably couldn’t accurately measure and dose zinc sulfate in its dry form (for a typical homebrew batch), but you could probably mix up a calculated solution and figure out how much of that will be needed in your batch size.
I use RO water for brewing and I feel that my use of Wyeast yeast nutrient does provide a small improvement to the beer fermentation performance, although I haven’t conducted scientific trials to confirm. I figure it’s insurance.
I treat my brewing water per Martin’s spread sheet, use dry yeast exclusively without any yeast nutrient, and have never had a problem. Beer is always good.
I’m sorry, I had to [emoji1787]
I agree with Denny on this. It’s cheap insurance. I even add a pinch of yeast nutrient to my starter wort. Whether it is necessary or not, IDK. But it is cheap insurance and yeast nutrient is very inexpensive.