Lowans bread yeast

Yeast talk, turbo, bakers and specialised strains

Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Sun Oct 04, 2015 10:00 pm

Sam. wrote:I was under the impression the reproduction phase will continue until all oxygen is used up :-B


I think that is a common myth that is widely reported to be true when it isn't. Whether yeast is respiring with or without oxygen it can reproduce. All the respiration is for is energy, and whilst with oxygen present the yeast is more efficient it can certainly operate without it and reproduce.

It seems the yeast stop reproducing when a certain factor of the environment is reached. In most cases (non controlled growth) this would be the removal of all nutrients which support growth. In our cases as brewers with a decent fermentation I suspect it is likely ph, or some kind of chemical messaging system the yeast use to indicate how packed the environment is with yeast. ie the other by products from the yeast activity. Something that as distillers we probably want to limit as much as we possibly can because it no doubt increases the heads/tails component.

Here is a page about it which kinda goes into it. https://www.morebeer.com/articles/how_yeast_use_oxygen

Definitely anyone wanting a neutral spirit wants to limit the reproduction phase as much as possible because this is where a lot of fusels and other things are generated. This means pitching a lot of yeast, the exact amount I have no idea about yet but I hope to find out for Lowans sometime soon. I'm not sure exactly how this info plays into whiskey/rum/scotch/ etc , I don't have much experience with that. I definitely know for beer you don't want to pitch too much because you'll get a flat taste so I'm figuring, loosely, that the same applies to anything you want a "taste" in.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Sun Oct 04, 2015 10:49 pm

If I give a quick break down of why you should oxygenate your wash. It's to help provide the capacity for sterol synthesis which is needed for reproduction. This is very important for anything which needs yeast reproduction to occur, ie beers, wines, etc.

Alternatives to sterol synthesis: Another way to provide lipids is to introduce into the starter a yeast nutrient that contains dead yeast, and thus lipids (not all yeast nutrients contain these).


Bakers yeast, like most dried yeast, is live yeast cells wrapped in dead yeast cells. There are usually more dead cells than live cells. This is why it alone can provide enough nutrients for a wash provided you pitch enough. If you don't you need to add some kind of nitrogen source and other supplements and make sure your wash is oxygenated enough. Pitching a fair amount of bakers yeast with the right supplements (magnesium sulphate at least) is all you need for a sugar wash to fully ferment out under 12% relatively quickly. But I wouldn't recommend anything over 10% with bakers yeast and you can do 5-6% washes in 24 hours with the right setup.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Teddysad » Mon Oct 05, 2015 5:10 am

I have played around with this too (See my Fast Fermenting Vodka Thread) viewtopic.php?f=25&t=8009
I use Angel yeast here (their standard bread one although they produce a large range including some for ethanol)
A small inclusion of epsom salts has great benefits but I also include a multivitamin tablet as the yeast like a whole range of stuff in the M/V not just Vitamin B.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Mon Oct 05, 2015 2:26 pm

Teddysad wrote:I have played around with this too (See my Fast Fermenting Vodka Thread) viewtopic.php?f=25&t=8009
I use Angel yeast here (their standard bread one although they produce a large range including some for ethanol)
A small inclusion of epsom salts has great benefits but I also include a multivitamin tablet as the yeast like a whole range of stuff in the M/V not just Vitamin B.


Did you try with higher epsom salts at all? From my tests on smaller batches it seems you need ~0.28 teaspoons per litre of wash to maximize performance. the 0.14 tsp/l wash finished slower than the 0.28 tsp one. This is only with pitching a high amount of yeast though so it may not play through to your brew as you only pitch 50g yeast. If you pulled my test yeast amounts to a full 25L batch you would need to use about 800g of yeast to get the same results, which is a couple cans of lowans, pretty much the same cost as a turbo yeast packet. I don't think I need that much to pull the same numbers I did but until I do more tests I won't know.

I need to keep my testing up to get more data to minimize the yeast and other supplements to get the best performance and taste. Strangely the chinese patent I saw used tiny amounts of magnesium sulphate in their final combination, about 0.001% by w/w . But when they tried it at 0.5% (which could be either 5g or 10g epsom per litre) they got better results than their 0.001% to 0.007% tests .So I'm not quite sure what's up with their testing. I'm not sure if they are using pure magnesium sulphate or epsom salts, which by weight is only 50% magnesium sulphate (the rest being water). Their patent isn't exactly the most scientific thing I've read and they mention the magnesium sulphate being "white and with tiny granules" which is most likely the hydrated form of it, ie epsom salts. For my tests it could be when using it on its own it's also having some impact on ph so the high amounts I saw improve results may not be needed if you're using other things or bring the ph down lower with something like citric acid.

My citric acid tests still aren't high enough in number to draw from except to say that citric acid on its own is nothing compared to magnesium sulphate. And I didn't catch the citric acid+epsom salt test quick enough to know if it slower or not than the pure epsom salt test I did, they both finished roughly at the same time.

As it stands right now my testing has shown the fact epsom salts + dried yeast is all you need in the right quantities to get a 4% ABV wash done in 5 hours. What impacts that has on taste and other things is still to be determined.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Teddysad » Mon Oct 05, 2015 6:15 pm

In my many runs I have tried increasing the Epsom salts to no significant result other than increased foaming.
In a 23 - 25 l wash a 1/4 or even 1/8 tsp is sufficient but its absence certainly drops performance.
At 50g yeast nicely hydrated the wash starts rapidly and ferments well and fast and dry with no overpowering yeast flavours - A healthy yeast will grow to suit its environment
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Mon Oct 05, 2015 7:19 pm

Here is a couple pics from my current testing "Rig" if you even want to call it that. I'm going to be doing something slightly different next time but here is my last test like this.

1st pic - After 1 hour my latest test, which is two tests repeated. I'm testing 1/8 tsp epsom + 1tsp yeast and 1/4tsp epsom + 1tbl yeast . The bigger foam ones are the ones with a tablespoon of yeast. So in a couple hours I'll know if a teaspoon of yeast matches a tablespoon I've been using for a while.
2nd pic - The bottles in the tub I use to control temp better with their outlets so I can monitor their bubbles
3rd pic - 4 x smirnoff 700ml bottlles with 400ml RO water + 2 tbl sugar (~30g)
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Teddysad » Tue Oct 06, 2015 5:34 am

Watching with interest however you have two variables in the test.
Ideally I would have done kept the yeast quantity the same and varied the ES
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Tue Oct 06, 2015 12:24 pm

Teddysad wrote:Watching with interest however you have two variables in the test.
Ideally I would have done kept the yeast quantity the same and varied the ES


Yep that is caused by an error I made with my test table. For some reason I wrote the first test two tests down twice and didn't realize it when actually doing all the filling, human error! :) I was supposed to do a 1/8 and 1/4 with both amounts of yeast. I'm going to try and setup a camera that records it so I can get a more accurate depiction of the bubble count and stop point and maybe show the growth of the yeast.

Messing the table up at least meant I could ruin two of the tests to measure their results before they finished though. At 5:30 hours into that test the 1tbl yeast moved the hydrometer from 1.035 to 1.005 . The 1 tsp yeast had moved it to 1.020 . For what it's worth. I know there is that extra variable there but knowing from my other tests the 1/8th teaspoon epsom salts + 1 tbl spoon yeast was nearly finished at 5 hours . So it certainly seems 1tsp yeast isn't as fast. I'm going to setup a proper test for just the yeast pitch and see if even more yeast helps.

I uploaded a couple images of weights of these things. Given that most digital scales are about as accurate as government accounting expect them to be 1-2 grams either way of what is shown.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Sam. » Tue Oct 06, 2015 4:55 pm

A set of jewllers scales that's go to 0.001 that can be calibrated might be more effective for the accuracy you are after.

You can get then on EBay fairly cheap :handgestures-thumbupleft:
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Tue Oct 06, 2015 8:57 pm

Sam. wrote:A set of jewllers scales that's go to 0.001 that can be calibrated might be more effective for the accuracy you are after.

You can get then on EBay fairly cheap :handgestures-thumbupleft:


Thanks for the idea, I think I'll do that. :) I thought they were more expensive than they were. Is there any good brands or anything I should look out for?
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Sam. » Wed Oct 07, 2015 2:27 am

Not sure what brand mine is but it seems to work ok and I paid bugger all for it :handgestures-thumbupleft:
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Wed Oct 07, 2015 12:47 pm

Sam. wrote:Not sure what brand mine is but it seems to work ok and I paid bugger all for it :handgestures-thumbupleft:


Yeah I just picked something cheap up off EBAY. Only 0.01 accurate but I wanted something that went to 500g and those 0.001 ones seemed to only go to ~30G unless you wanted to drop a lot on them! Thanks for the advice, I'm happy I'll have one of these things soon. For some reason I thought the only accurate way to get these results was to get one of those physical scales you see on those drug dealer raid TV shows. ;)
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Teddysad » Wed Oct 07, 2015 3:12 pm

Accuracy to 0.1 g is fine
Any more than that is pedantic
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Sam. » Wed Oct 07, 2015 5:06 pm

Teddysad wrote:Accuracy to 0.1 g is fine
Any more than that is pedantic


For very small test batches accuracy is probably fairly important for testing purposes :-B
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Wed Oct 07, 2015 6:01 pm

I went out today and bought some more gear for testing. I bought a semi expensive bench scale that goes up to 1kg with 0.01 accuracy, so I should have two scales once the other one arrives but I felt like this bigger unit could perhaps be more accurate and allow my current testing to not change much. I also bought a digital PH meter and laser temperature gun. All things I wanted for a long time for a variety of different projects but this gave me the boost to get them.

I did a few ph tests already. Strangely I thought my reverse osmosis water would be somewhere between 6.0 to 6.5 ph but it's actually 7.4ish. This meter is pretty funky, just a hand movement near it can set it off. You have to give it distance so it can settle down (like my wife). I tested some coke and it was 2.8 . Anyhow I'll repost those measurements with the new device and see what I get. But now I have something more accurate I think I may decide to do something like test in grams rather than tablespoons/teaspoons etc. Bit more scientific and less bakeryish. I'll also measure the weight lost of each container in 30 minute intervals which will better map the yeasts performance compared to nutrient mix.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby rumdidlydum » Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:05 pm

Mate your dedicated :handgestures-thumbupleft:
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:25 pm

Here's a couple new pics on the "better than my last scale" device. Shows it was off a gram or two in most instances.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Thu Oct 08, 2015 2:18 pm

Here's the first 2 hours of my last test sped up into 20 seconds or so.

30g sugar, 1g epsom salts, 400ml water. So their are 4 varying quantities of yeast used, 5g, 10g, 15g and 20g, going from left to right, A B C D.

As you can see bottles C and D blew their tops. D is completely useless for my tests due to its loss, I salvaged some of the C data. I'll post the results in a bit.


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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Thu Oct 08, 2015 4:37 pm

Ok I just uploaded the results with a couple graphs. The data for 15g yeast is going to be a little off because it lost some contents but I could roughly estimate how much it lost. It would have done a bit better than what is shown. It also seems if there was more sugar in there it would have likely shown better that it would be a lot faster. So I'll do a couple more tests along those lines with higher ABVs soon.

All three started with 400ml water, 1g epsom salts, 30g sugar and varied the yeast added. The temp of each bottle was measured every 30 minutes and measured 32-34C until fermentation finished upon which it reached room temp. It was pitched at 30C .

All three had final gravity of 1.0 . Start at 1035 like usual. It seems that roughly 12-13g of CO2 was lost in the consumption of 30g of sugar.

There is a "Balling formula" that states :- "2.0665 gms extract in wort make 1 gm of alcohol, 0.9565 gm CO2 and 0.11 gm yeast mass"

So that should mean I should have lost 13.88g of CO2. Anyhow I guess it is probably just a rough formula.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Sat Oct 10, 2015 2:49 am

After having those boil overs I tried a few things to restrict the growth of the foam. Tried physical restrictions, oils, acids, but nothing much worked.

I thought it was just because of my high pitch rate and it was completely normal to have that much foam but it seems I was wrong. Every test so far has been pulling the yeast out from the fridge and just dumping it in some ~30C wash. I think the thermal shock is killing a lot of the yeast, making it float to the top, get caught in the CO2 bubbles and hence foam a lot. I only noticed this by accident tonight when I had the yeast out of the fridge for maybe 5 minutes and only pitched it into ~18C water before bringing it up to 30C.

Isn't it funny how sometimes you find the answer with a mistake!? Well I find it a bit funny.

Anyhow I was trying an acid mix and seeing if start PH affected foaming, and it does. Only because less CO2 is produced. I have two test batches running now, 20g yeast, 1g epsom, 30g sugar and 400ml water, one of them has 0.3g of citric acid to bring the ph down to 4.6 . The other started at 6.1. Both have only doubled their height. After the first hour the citric acid - 4.6ph start is doing about 50% worse than the one which started at 6.1ph. If you watch the video I made last time you can see the 20g yeast just exploded under 30 minutes, so warming that yeast up is very important! I'll find out how important soon..... I have a can of lowans in the cupboard which will be room temp for my next tests and I'll test it against a fridge batch. Hopefully someone here can use that information on their next wash if they were like me using yeast straight out of the fridge !

I did a series of ph tests with another batch that was the same that started at 6.1 . The yeast lowers the ph of the wash consistently in a linear fashion until it hits 4.6 . Then it stays there for some time at 4.6 until enough CO2 is produced to further lower it. After 2 hours it's down to 3.9. 4.6ph is the optimal range for the enzyme which splits the sugar into pyruvate so the yeast can process it. Going by my citric acid test the yeast must like doing something that helps it get there because already having the wash at the 4.6 it wants didn't help.

After 30 minutes I dropped some baking soda into the yeast to bring the ph up to 6.8. I thought "the yeast is going to bring this back down to 4.6 but it didn't. So it seems, guessingly, that perhaps the yeast makes enough enzymes to convert sugar to last it for some time. Either that or the process of producing that enzyme has little effect on the PH and something else that the yeast do when acclimatizing gets it in the range it wants and perhaps that process is shut off when the ph drops to optimal level. This, could in theory mean a higher start ph than 6.1 may even be better for the yeast as it gives it more time to "Fatten up" so to speak. So it's something else to test eventually.
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