Lowans bread yeast

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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Mon Oct 12, 2015 5:13 pm

I contacted a couple of yeast producers to attempt to find a live cell count of their products but none have given any yet. Lowans stated they don't know, which is probably due to them just importing some foreign yeast. Anyone know what their source is?

Seems to be people think its anywhere from 5 billion to 30 billion per gram which is quite a large margin.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Mon Oct 12, 2015 9:44 pm

I just ran another test, this time comparing pitch temp and yeast temp. So I pitched 20g of 20C (room temp) yeast into 30C water, and 20C water . The 20C water I would then bring up to 30C within 30 minutes. And I tried pitching fridge temp (6C) yeast into the same conditions. I was hoping to find what, if any differences the effect of room temp yeast vs fridge temp yeast had and also the impact of the pitching temperature.

Both the 30C pitches experienced foam violence and overflowed, but the fridge yeast overflowed first and was a bit more violent. I stopped them both from overflowing and simply stirred them up a bit to get it back down. Surprisingly to me the fridge temp yeast in 30C water performed slightly better than the room temp yeast in 30C, but that could simply be due to me stirring it in sooner because it exploded sooner. Both have roughly finished (13g CO2 released) just before 2 hours elapsed. Which is another surprising thing to me. 2 hours for 4% abv? That's fast, fastest I've recorded yet. It seems to me a doubling of yeast from 10g to 20g nearly correlates into a halving of time taken to ferment. What this means is 20g might not even be the limit here, which is kinda scary.

The 20C pitches, both are very similar. The fridge yeast is doing a little better than the room temp, another surprise. But it slightly foamed more, but both had little foam compared to the 30C pitch, about equal size foam to liquid height. Both are about 50% through the sugar after 2 hours. I suspect they need another hour to 90 mins.

Preliminary findings indicate pitching temp matters a lot for performance, even yeast that is brought up to 30C within 30 minutes does not even get close in matching a yeast that started at 30C. I suspect the yeast upon "awakening" determine the environment their in and perhaps lag a bit in changing their mode of operation. Otherwise I would have expected the 20C pitch to be at worst 30 minutes behind. But that's not the case at all.

The pitching temp, yeast temp and the amount of yeast also directly affect how much foam violence is experienced. Yeast that was 20C experienced less foam violence than yeast that was 6C in the 30C liquid. So getting the yeast closer to your pitching temp is important for foam, which is likely some indicator of amount of yeast that die from the thermal shock. However whatever death did occur did not impact the time taken to ferment the sugar in the 30C case, in fact it seems to have helped it.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Tue Oct 13, 2015 2:30 pm

I uploaded a video of the test so people could see the foam differences. You can see the 20C pitches do nearly nothing at all until the temperature is 30C, so even though they've been pitched for 30 minutes there is very little activity until the temp is high enough. However they also don't explode in foam when they do get going. I have a feeling that the foam is brought about by 2 main conditions outside of the CO2 , the amount of dead yeast and whatever soaking/protein/enzyme activity is going on which lowers the PH. It seems once the PH is lowered to the yeasts optimal range the foam issue disappears after some minutes. This is why the 20C pitches which lower the PH somewhat before they start pumping CO2 have a much lower foam, the "stickiness" isn't as big by that time.

The 30C pitches finished in under 2 hours, the 20C pitches that were raised to 30C finished in 3 and a half hours, nearly double the length even though they were the same temp as the other bottles after 30 minutes. Yeast seem to have a lag time in changing to conditions.


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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Wed Oct 14, 2015 1:41 am

I'm just collating some of my other data. Here is a graph of citric acid affect on yeast fermentation.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Wed Oct 14, 2015 2:12 am

Here is a 60g sugar test. It's roughly 8% ABV, fermented out in under 6 hours. So a doubling of alcohol with the same exact setup resulted in a 3x increase in time. But still, 6 hours for 8% is very fast. Once I find a nutrient setup I'm happy with for something around 8-10% I'll run a much larger amount and see if I can replicate these smaller results. The downside at the moment is I have no good way to clarify as fast as I want. It takes at least 12 hours for the yeast to settle but I'd rather go from finish to distilling in an hour at most to limit the contact with the yeast cake. I'm looking into ways to do this without getting a centrifuge.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby WTDist » Wed Oct 14, 2015 10:56 am

good read. whats the left one for with the number and g ie 9g? grams?
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Wed Oct 14, 2015 11:30 am

WTDist wrote:good read. whats the left one for with the number and g ie 9g? grams?


How much carbon dioxide has been lost in grams. You can accurately determine the percentage of sugar consumed by determining how much weight has been lost to carbon dioxide.

For this setup it seems about 13 grams is lost to CO2 for 30g of sugar to be consumed. And 26 grams of CO2 is lost for 60 grams of sugar to be consumed. It's just under half of the weight of the sugar.

For a bigger brew you could put it on a scale that we usually use for our weight and track your sugar consuming process there without using a hydrometer if you wanted.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:48 pm

For anyone interested, the makeup of lowans instant dried.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae > 98.5 %
Emulsifier : sorbitan monostearate (E491) < 1.5 %
Contains no other chemical additive.

I'm doing an investigation into what effect this E491 is having on the fermentation. My initial feeling is its colouring the wash a yellowish tinge. I only noticed because the more dried yeast I dump in the more yellow it gets. I used to think this was just how the end product of a wash looked. It's also possible the dead yeast cells present in the dried yeast are contributing this yellowing tinge, I can't be certain yet. But it's there before any additives are added so it's definitely coming from the dried yeast contents.

It could certainly be contributing to the yeast itself increasing toxin count in which case it would be advisable you "Wash" Your dried yeast before using it. I think for anything I drink from dried yeast from now on this is what is going to happen because whether it's dead cells or E491 it's nothing you want in your wash. I'll see if it has any impact on performance.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Thelegion » Thu Oct 15, 2015 11:39 am

This is all very interesting, I have used fleishmans bread yeast and seems to impart a rather nice taste in he end product. I have now switched to red star bakers at about $5 a pound and does a really nice job as well. My sugar washes are generally 30 ltrs or bigger, I am slowly using less and less yeast to get the job done but really not sure if I'm over yeasting. I roughly use 1cup of yeast that I pre start after the wash cools to about 35c and mix and aerate well. I have noticed that 99% of the washes finish in a full week and you can almost set your watch to them, my s gravity is always between 1.08-09 and I don't deviate from that.

So am I or how do I know if I'm over yeasting.? I have also stopped using citric acid and any tomatoe paste and the results are the same. Does anyone follow a general rule for bakers yeasts.?

Cheers. TL....
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby WTDist » Thu Oct 15, 2015 12:26 pm

Thelegion wrote:I have also stopped using citric acid and any tomatoe paste and the results are the same.

.

what wash ingredients do you use?
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby jacobraven » Thu Oct 15, 2015 12:48 pm

:text-+1:
WTDist wrote:
Thelegion wrote:I have also stopped using citric acid and any tomatoe paste and the results are the same.

.

what wash ingredients do you use?
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Thu Oct 15, 2015 1:01 pm

Thelegion wrote:This is all very interesting, I have used fleishmans bread yeast and seems to impart a rather nice taste in he end product. I have now switched to red star bakers at about $5 a pound and does a really nice job as well. My sugar washes are generally 30 ltrs or bigger, I am slowly using less and less yeast to get the job done but really not sure if I'm over yeasting. I roughly use 1cup of yeast that I pre start after the wash cools to about 35c and mix and aerate well. I have noticed that 99% of the washes finish in a full week and you can almost set your watch to them, my s gravity is always between 1.08-09 and I don't deviate from that.

So am I or how do I know if I'm over yeasting.? I have also stopped using citric acid and any tomatoe paste and the results are the same. Does anyone follow a general rule for bakers yeasts.?

Cheers. TL....


Most of my testing is using what most people would call "too much yeast" so knowing that... :) For a sugar wash in my opinion this idea of "overpitching" does not exist, at least in a way which most people would think it does. People are simply taking beer/wine brewing advice and applying it to distilling. It's not great to do such things. Wine and beers need the formation of esters and fusels to produce TASTE. Without them beer/wine tastes like sh*t. Just like drinking a sugar wash would. So they want to PROMOTE reproduction and lag of the yeast. From all the research I've read limiting the lag and reproduction phases of the yeast limit the fusels and esters all other things being equal. This means high amounts of starting yeast is better than not.

Whether using dried yeast in such huge amounts is a good idea I cannot tell you yet as I am yet to distil any such batches. And like I am finding out about E491, you may want to clean your dried yeast before using it because I'm not sure this stuff is the best for us. But to extrapolate my tests to a 25L batch would take 1.2kg of yeast. This is 5 lowan cans. You could ferment out 8% ABV in 6 hours this way. Worrying about a cup or two of yeast is not needed. Add two, three cups, whatever to more to make it faster and compare the difference. You could be making something cleaner by using more yeast, not less.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Thu Oct 15, 2015 1:10 pm

WTDist wrote:
Thelegion wrote:I have also stopped using citric acid and any tomatoe paste and the results are the same.

.

what wash ingredients do you use?


You will need tomato paste (or some other nutrient) if you start with low amounts of yeast like usually recommended in those wash guides. You can't use the same low amount of yeast, remove the nutrients and expect same or better results. You can only throw away the tomato paste if you up the yeast. It's a simple concept, the more yeast you put in the less reproduction needs to occur to consume the sugar. Also dried yeast contains dead yeast which is a nutrient for the live ones. This is why with enough dried yeast you need nothing else except epsom salts to produce a fast result.

It's also possible some other nutrients will speed things up even more, like zinc/trace elements. But again the dried yeast already has many of these which is why epsom salts alone seems to make such a large difference . Just don't go changing tried and true wash guides by removing ingredients and not substituting something else in its place. If you see any pitch guide that's under 200g of yeast for 25L you need a nitrogen supplementation, other nutrients too, and proper oxygenation of the wash.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Thelegion » Thu Oct 15, 2015 1:17 pm

jacobraven wrote::text-+1:
WTDist wrote:
Thelegion wrote:I have also stopped using citric acid and any tomatoe paste and the results are the same.

.

what wash ingredients do you use?


I will use all cane sugar for rums, demerara and brown and ad molasses sometimes. But it doesn't seem to matter, white brown corn or beet sugar they all behave the same. There is no really crazy giant heads just nice marble sized bubbles, and within a day it's fizzing away like a soda on steroids. This stays like this from 1.08/9 until it drops to about 1.04/5 and then settles into a quiet little fizz until finished. If I'm feeling flush and I see them on sale I'll chuck in a vanilla bean but that's rare.

I must note that in the beginning I used tomato paste with fleishmans yeast and the end result had a wonderful mellow slide to it. I think it was in part the yeast and paste, they were imparting flavors in the final distillate. Fleishmans just priced themselves out of the market when I saw red star at $5 lb.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Thelegion » Thu Oct 15, 2015 1:28 pm

hoochlover wrote:
WTDist wrote:
Thelegion wrote:I have also stopped using citric acid and any tomatoe paste and the results are the same.

.

what wash ingredients do you use?


You will need tomato paste (or some other nutrient) if you start with low amounts of yeast like usually recommended in those wash guides. You can't use the same low amount of yeast, remove the nutrients and expect same or better results. You can only throw away the tomato paste if you up the yeast. It's a simple concept, the more yeast you put in the less reproduction needs to occur to consume the sugar. Also dried yeast contains dead yeast which is a nutrient for the live ones. This is why with enough dried yeast you need nothing else except epsom salts to produce a fast result.

It's also possible some other nutrients will speed things up even more, like zinc/trace elements. But again the dried yeast already has many of these which is why epsom salts alone seems to make such a large difference . Just don't go changing tried and true wash guides by removing ingredients and not substituting something else in its place. If you see any pitch guide that's under 200g of yeast for 25L you need a nitrogen supplementation, other nutrients too, and proper oxygenation of the wash.



So now I'm at 1 cup read star per 35+ltr wash, I was using much more, up to two cups + at times. The wash would "brown up" real fast and ferment out about the same give or take a day. I have never noticed any bad tastes to the end product and a spoonful off the parrot at 95% is pretty darn smooth, end product distilled again into gin is massively good. So I guess from my experiments I would not use less than 1 cup for 35ltrs and that might be a little on the light side. I won't even touch on commercial yeasts that's out of my league and I would be an idiot if I attempted any knowledge in that department.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Thelegion » Thu Oct 15, 2015 2:48 pm

One thing worth noting is that from what I have read, a slower, gentle ferment is optimal for a quality end product. I personally am not trying maximize high alcohol content washes and prefer a slower gentler approach to my distilling enjoyment. I would try a bakers type yeast on anything I made and second try the commercial specific yeasts for say a whiskey and then compare the two. I personally strive to make a unique product and not to copy the commercial folks, I don't want to load my solutions up with testosterone like ingredients to boost alcohol content later to have to use a carbon filter to make it palatable, hey but that's just me.

I think different yeasts have their product specific places and experimentation with them is like building a new still, it's a great adventure. I'm sure I'll be on the hunt for some rum specific yeast sooner than later, it's all part of the evolution of the craft.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Thu Oct 15, 2015 3:02 pm

Thelegion wrote:One thing worth noting is that from what I have read, a slower, gentle ferment is optimal for a quality end product.


Yes that is the common practice among home distillers. Whether it's right or not who knows, I haven't found anyone on the distiller sites dumping so much dried yeast into a run, even as an experiment. I've seen people trying like 200-300g and calling that "crazy", but it worked. So I wonder what they think of my 1.2kg idea. :) I think the main reason people haven't tried with so much yeast is the fact it's way more expensive and people are fine following beer/wine advice and getting decent results from it.

Thelegion wrote: I personally am not trying maximize high alcohol content washes and prefer a slower gentler approach to my distilling enjoyment. I would try a bakers type yeast on anything I made and second try the commercial specific yeasts for say a whiskey and then compare the two. I personally strive to make a unique product and not to copy the commercial folks, I don't want to load my solutions up with testosterone like ingredients to boost alcohol content later to have to use a carbon filter to make it palatable, hey but that's just me.

I think different yeasts have their product specific places and experimentation with them is like building a new still, it's a great adventure. I'm sure I'll be on the hunt for some rum specific yeast sooner than later, it's all part of the evolution of the craft.


I'm only experimenting with bakers yeast at the moment. Buying those other yeasts in any large quantity would be crazy expensive. :) But from what I've read different strains have different fusel/ester proportions which is important for beer/wine, and perhaps distilling.

My main aim isn't high ABV either, it's a clean product that fits in the schedule I want. If doing 1% washes was the most clean I don't think I would bother because it's too much effort. So it's kinda a mix between clean and throughput I guess. I want as much hearts each run as possible. I'll be doing a 16% test soon and hope to get it under a day.

If you try any experiments with yeast be sure to post them as I would love to read it. Thanks.
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Whiskyaugogo » Thu Oct 15, 2015 3:34 pm

hoochlover wrote:For anyone interested, the makeup of lowans instant dried.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae > 98.5 %
Emulsifier : sorbitan monostearate (E491) < 1.5 %
Contains no other chemical additive.

I'm doing an investigation into what effect this E491 is having on the fermentation. My initial feeling is its colouring the wash a yellowish tinge. I only noticed because the more dried yeast I dump in the more yellow it gets. I used to think this was just how the end product of a wash looked. It's also possible the dead yeast cells present in the dried yeast are contributing this yellowing tinge, I can't be certain yet. But it's there before any additives are added so it's definitely coming from the dried yeast contents.

It could certainly be contributing to the yeast itself increasing toxin count in which case it would be advisable you "Wash" Your dried yeast before using it. I think for anything I drink from dried yeast from now on this is what is going to happen because whether it's dead cells or E491 it's nothing you want in your wash. I'll see if it has any impact on performance.


You will find most commercial yeasts use E491 as the emulsifier. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

How do you "wash" a dried yeast? :think:
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby Sam. » Thu Oct 15, 2015 3:57 pm

I would love to see you try a 200L wash with scaled up ingredients to see the results :handgestures-thumbupleft:
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Re: Lowans bread yeast

Postby hoochlover » Thu Oct 15, 2015 5:39 pm

Whiskyaugogo wrote:You will find most commercial yeasts use E491 as the emulsifier. :handgestures-thumbupleft:


Yes most do these days. Apparently some don't , but some say it's just because they don't put it on the label. Active dry yeast sometimes doesn't use it apparently but unless you have an electron microscope how can you be sure anyhow?

Whiskyaugogo wrote:How do you "wash" a dried yeast? :think:


Put it in water with a little sugar, wait till you can decant it. I haven't seen if this has an impact on performance yet. But doing this a couple times pretty much removes the yellow tinge.

Look at the image below you can see something that has been rinsed once (right) vs something straight out of the packet. And it's not because the yeast on right has settled more, even the yeast itself is a different colour.
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