My buddy and I often brew beer, but the other day we decided to try making some mead. If any of you have not tried making mead, I suggest you give it a try, its super easy! Anyways he pitched some yeast nutrient into his mead and I wondered why does mead need yeast nutrient?
When homebrewing beer you do not need yeast nutrient. Mead and cider are a different story, you will likely need yeast nutrient for cider and definitely need it for mead.
I have rarely if ever used yeast nutrient for my homebrew beer. If you are having trouble getting the most alcohol content out of your homebrew you might want to try using yeast nutrient.
Skip the Yeast Nutrient
For most purposes you will not need yeast nutrient in your beer. You can toss the yeast right into the carboy after you are done cooking. It may be beneficial if you have a high alcohol content beer and a wort with very little nutrients.
What I mean by this is if you are making a light beer with lots of sugar added you will likely want to get the highest alcohol content you can. The yeast feeds on the sugars, but it also needs other nutrients to get to its fullest potential.
I once made a watermelon lager. Things did not turn out well. In fact my lager ended up with an alcohol content less than 1%. To this day I’m not sure exactly where I went wrong but it could have been the yeast did not grow because of how light the beer.
You see I had very little grains to provide the sugars for the beer and I used watermelon extract in the boil. I don’t think there was much there for the yeast to actually feed on.
While it is possible there was another issue for the alcohol in the beer not reaching its true potential yeast nutrient could be a good place to start. It may have been that I did not properly mill the grain to get enough sugars out of the grains, but even so, the sugar I did get out should have fermented a bit more than that.
I would suspect for most purposes you don’t actually need yeast nutrient except for rare occasions such as the above. Yeast nutrient is also incredibly cheap anyways at a few bucks a bottle. You don’t even need to use the whole bottle for every brew so its actually pretty cheap insurance.
Yeast Starter
Most yeast starters will say that you need to use yeast nutrient anyways so you might as well have some on hand. It’s also suggested that you use a yeast starter for every beer instead of pitching directly from the packet. That way you know your yeast is strong and healthy before wasting an entire days work.
Yeast starters are honestly the best way to know if your yeast is healthy. If yeast smells good and looks healthy then you are good and ready to pitch it in the carboy.
Saving and reusing your yeast is a great way to save money but you also can save some cash on nutrient as well. Since beer generally doesn’t need yeast nutrient you can essentially multiply your yeast naturally.
Yeast in Cider and Mead
Yeast nutrient is an absolute must when it comes to mead. The ingredients of mead are water and honey. There is not much for the yeast to survive in that tiny arrangement of ingredients.
You can also make a starter for mead to make sure that your yeast is robust. However if you are looking to save time you can just pitch the yeast and starter into your pre-fermented mead.
Cider is a tricky one. There is a lot of discussion on whether or not you actually need yeast nutrient. As a general rule of thumb its good to use yeast nutrient in cider but like beer its probably not an absolute must. Experiment with your recipe’s to see if you can eek out any more alcohol content by using nutrient.
Bottom line is are you happy with how your beer turned out? While some of us want to be incredibly efficient and squeeze the absolute most alcohol we can out of our ingredients if you enjoy the beer, cider or mead then its a success, even if it is only a 2%.
Yeast Nutrient Substitute
I’ve done a lot of talking above about yeast nutrient on whether or not you need it. But in the cases where you do need it and you find that your bottle has run out can you substitute just anything for it?
Some Common Replacements:
- Old Homebrew
- Raisins
- Rolled Oats
A lot of yeast nutrient is essentially dead yeast. If you are using the same yeast brew after brew you might be able to scavenge the dead yeast from a previous brew.
Another suggestion is to use raisins. Just chop up a cup of raisins, make sure any bad bacteria is dead on it and add it to the yeast starter. Chopping the raisins will ensure there is more surface area for it to feed on.
Some have also suggested using rolled oats boiled in water. By straining the liquid out you essentially have dead yeast. You can then add this to your starter to grow your yeast nice and healthy.
While these are some fun an interesting science experiments you might as well buy yeast nutrient since its so cheap. But when you are in a pinch why not?
I would suggest that you use a yeast starter if you are using any of these methods. There is no sense in ruining your entire homebrew because you were trying to get creative.
Too Much Yeast Nutrient
You actually can have too much yeast nutrient. While this typically will not be a concern for most brewers don’t go crazy on it. I know as brewers we want to get the most alcohol we can out of the ingredients we use, but you can run the risk of ruining the whole batch.
Don’t go crazy and add a whole bottle this could lead to your beer spoiling or becoming overly acidic. It’s probably not something you want if you like to drink a lot of beer.
Just remember we want just enough yeast to eat the sugars present in our wort. If we go overboard we could risk blowing of the top or having a terrible smell.
Balance is what is necessary in order to get the perfect brew. Experiment will only slight variations to achieve the alcohol level you want without all the nasty side affects.
Best Yeast Nutrient
It really is not worth it to research or even consider which yeast nutrient is better than another. Many of the online brew supply stores have yeast nutrient for sale at cheap levels. You are better off just buying one and going from there.
All yeast nutrient is likely going to give you the same result anyways, healthy yeast. I suspect even many microbrewery operations don’t give much thought into the yeast nutrient they use. They will probably care more about the price of the nutrient they are getting, since they are working off of bigger volumes.
Shop around the different online brewery supply stores and check out the reviews. You can take a look at NorthernBrewer or MrBeer. They will likely have the same yeast nutrients. You can take a look at if there are any special deals like free delivery or if you are buying anything else and yeast nutrient comes with it.
If you already have an Amazon subscription just add yeast nutrient to your next purchase and you are good to go.