I ran out of Dried Malt Extract and need to make a yeast starter. My local homebrew shop is not open until after Monday. Can I make a yeast starter with Corn sugar? I have a stir plate, Yeast Hulls, Yeast Nutrients, Servomyces, DAP, Go-ferm, and Fermaid-K, but no DME.
If it were me, I’d just wait till I could get some extract. The sugar will probably start it up, but I think that the yeasties like to be started up on the food they’ll ultimately be eating…malt. If you start them up with dextrose, they may not be quite as healthy (kind of like the apparent effect of dextrose on people).
I was thinking the same thing but just wanted to make sure. Darn…this is going to push my brewing schedule back one week. I had to bottle the 3 different brews that are in the freezer chest, then i was going to rack the other 3 brews that are in the fermenters and cold condition them so i could brew some more beers. I really dropped the ball on this one, now everything gets pushed back. I need to start taking closer look at my inventory…
Thanks for the suggestion, i really appreciate it.
well, this is a later post, but i think people still may read this. If you are making a starter, im assuming you already have your grains, right? well try this out—heat a litre of water to 150 degrees. Put one cup of grain in the heated water and steep for an hour. you won’t miss one cup of grain. then boil for 5 minutes, pour it into your flask, cover with foil , let cool to room temp and pitch yeast and nutrient. bingo-- starter in a pinch.
Cool tip…
The dry yeast manufacturers propagate yeast using molasses as the carbon source. Molasses is a better carbon source to use in a pinch than dextrose (a.k.a. corn sugar) because molasses contains trace elements and vitamins. You will need to add 1/4 tsp of DAP per liter as your nitrogen source.
Done it many times. I always have grain, sometimes no DME.