White Sugar Nutrients Informantion

[pintoshine]

Here is a general rule for a good, fast, and clean fermentation, with your choice of yeast.

ph 4 to 5. 4.8 being optimal
sugar no higher that 1.100 with 1.080 preferable.

Nutrients must have nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous, iron, zinc, magnesium, foliate, niacin, riboflavin, protein (about 10 different amino acids) in the appropriate quantities.

The sugars are a whole topic.
Sucrose does best if inverted. Citric acid inverts faster than malic, tartaric, or lactic acid. Hydrochloric acid is extremely fast but kills yeast. Sulfuric acid is the best by far but the sulfur compounds eat the copper fast. I prefer to stick to the edible acids. Acetic acid is a wonderful sugar inverter but really makes nasty heads. Phosphoric acid is hard to get hold of except in hard candy and soft drinks but this is the magic sucrose inverter and adds a hint of soft drink to the spirit.

Maltose is a yeast favorite. Yeast is a super producer of maltase so it readily cleaves the maltose.
Glucose and dextrose, which are nearly identical but for some reason the chemists in the world love to qualify them by the source, ferment directly and easily.
Lactose isn't fermented too well by bakers, brewers or wine yeast. Wild yeast will eat this stuff up. The trouble with lactose is that so many bacteria will also eat this stuff up too. Every time I have gotten hold of a quantity of whey it was already sour.

The acidity added by hops makes yeast go crazy, and probably adds lots of other nutrients but are impossible to seperate the hops flavor from the distillate.

DAP works better than ammonia nitrate which work better than urea for nitrogen. I mean better as in the amounts required to get the same results. Ammonia does not work at all at first, but once the wild yeast and bacteria start converting it to urea it works ok. The urea always gives the tails a lot of acidity. Deathwish claims to be able to taste the urea in the spirit. Yeasts do funny things to urea or visa versa.

The proteins in fruits, grains and yeast are all suitable. Molasses has none. http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-C00001-01c21Ru.html

The water soluble protein from malted barley obtained from a good protein rest at 120° F makes an explosive fermentation, but causes the foam to puke horrendously. Malt beer and a pot still without a puke box is a bad idea if you are in any kind of hurry. Every time I have tried this I have had to let the alcohol chill in the fridge and filter it twice to get it clear. I guess that is my bad luck. The protein in tomato paste is nice and balanced. Needless to say, almost all fruit juices are complete as they are. My favorite protein source is wheat germ. http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-C00001-01c20Sb.html
A combination of sucrose (inverted with citric acid) and wheat germ will ferment as well as anything I have ever tried and tastes real good kind a like a wheat malt whiskey.

Additional nutrients for the pure sugar fermenters are B vitamin supplements. These can be pharmacy B mixes, complete one a day or the yeast nutrient kind from the home brew shop. I have never found any difference in these except that most of the pharmacy types have coloring and give the wash a tint. I grind all the pill type with a mortar and pestle.

One that I recently added to my nutrient list of super enhancers is magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts), It seems yeast need a bit of magnesium.

I did back-to-back fermentations of high fructose corn syrup, HFCS55 to be exact, with black strap molasses, in a couple different combinations.

The HFCS recipe was pretty straight forward. 10-10-10 at 1 tsp per gallon, 1/8 tsp citric acid per gallon, 1/5 a one a day per gallon and 1 tsp yeast per gallon boiled with the other nutrients. I pitched 11g dry champagne yeast.
This had a nearly complete fermentation in 14 days at 12% abv.

In another batch I used 1 gallon of 65% DSS black strap molasses in 6 gallons of water. I pitched 11g dry champagne yeast. This fermented to 9% abv in about two weeks.

I looked up at some site about the nutrient content of blackstrap. No nitrogen, no B vitamins, no protein.

I adjusted the recipe. I added DAP, one a day and boiled yeast to the 6 gallon batch of blackstrap. I pitched bread yeast. Bang, it was 9% in 32 hours.

I was stumped. What was it in the molasses that was not in my HFCS concoction? It turned out to be magnesium.

I redid the HFCS and added 1/4 tsp Epson salts for the 6 gallon batch. I pitched bread yeast and Bang! Same results as the molasses.

Deathwish did a large batch of 150 gallons with 55 pounds(5 gallons) of HFCS and 48 pounds(4 gallons) of Blackstrap with an adjusted ration of 26-6-6, boiled yeast, b vitamins, Epson salt. Again the same results, but in 48° F weather. Two days for full attenuation to 9%. The molasses seems to add the needed acidity and some needed minerals.

In the Proven Recipes you will find Deathwish's Wheatgerm. This is a very easy recipe for sugar washes. It is a cross between a synthetic wash and a grain wash in that it has some flavor like grain. It is very easy to do for beginners.