Home Distiller

There are no homebrew stores anywhere near me -- I'm in a part of the world where alcohol is quite frowned upon.

I've found tomato paste can serve as a fine nutrient but it can be kind of annoying to make... could blended and boiled tomato offer similar benefits? I'm assuming birdwatchers uses it because canned tomato paste is probably easy to find in other parts of the world.

When venturing into the UJSSM rabbit hole it seems like corn can offer a lot of nutrients. I've been able to get mine to ferment dry.

What are other food products that can offer nutrition? Would cooked rice or bread be of any use? Or maybe some homemade apple sauce?

There are no epsom salts, fancy yeasts, malt, barley, or DAP available here, but I can boil bread yeast easy. Though, I've also been able to get fruit juices to ferment up to 8%-ish pretty easy. Sugar is cheaper and easier so I would rather stick to that for my neutral spirits than fruit juice...

All advice would be appreciated!

Shady's Sugar Shine has been working for me for decades, even before Shady posted it on the forum.

viewtopic.php?t=70585

I've had excellent and rubbish results using tomato paste, brands making the difference.

My best advice is to move to a country where you are less likely to lose body parts if you are caught having a tipple.

Go out and collect some stinging nettles, run them through a blender with a splash of water and add this to the yeast slurry from your last ferment, 1:1 ratio.
Don't boil it, bring it up to approx 40c and hold for an hour. Store in the fridge and add approx 50ml per gallon to your sugar washes as nutrient.

NZChris wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 11:43 pm Shady's Sugar Shine has been working for me for decades, even before Shady posted it on the forum.

viewtopic.php?t=70585

I've had excellent and rubbish results using tomato paste, brands making the difference.

Any good rules of thumb about adding multivitamins or B vitamins? Something like 1 pill per kg of sugar?

Shady's sugar shine seems appealing, but no epsom salt or DAP

I suspect part of why tomatoes work well is because they're high in nitrogen -- maybe soy and beans could offer nutrition benefits for yeast? I feel like boiled brown rice, even without mashing/enzymes, may be able to offer some nutritional benefits... hmm... plenty of B vitamins and some nitrogen there...

Appreciating the feedback so far, it's an unusual problem and I thought if anyone'd know, it would be you guys

Look up rye bread sugarhead. That might give some ideas. Keeping your ferment abv lower like around 8% is ideal. Kale sugar wash has been used too but i’ve never tried it.

Best luck and looking forward to seeing what you might try.

Cheers,
-j

Boiled bread yeast also makes a fine yeast nutrient - for a 1.080 wash around 2g/liter should do you right.

Kale, 50-80 grams, about four leaves (minus stalks). Strip blades from the stalks and put it in a blender with nearly one litre of water and puree until you have a green smoothie. Look up Googe’s Goo for details.

oplosan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 11:24 pm
What are other food products that can offer nutrition? Would

Breakfast cereal.

shadylane wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2024 12:57 pm

oplosan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 11:24 pm
What are other food products that can offer nutrition? Would

Breakfast cereal.

Gerber baby cereal.

I noticed that some of the generic cereals have more nutrients than the major brands.

shadylane wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2024 12:57 pm

oplosan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 11:24 pm
What are other food products that can offer nutrition? Would

Breakfast cereal.

Almost forgot.
Breakfast cereal and some boiled yeast.

MooseMan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 11:50 pm Go out and collect some stinging nettles, run them through a blender with a splash of water and add this to the yeast slurry from your last ferment, 1:1 ratio.
Don't boil it, bring it up to approx 40c and hold for an hour. Store in the fridge and add approx 50ml per gallon to your sugar washes as nutrient.

I have an abunancy of nettles where I live this time of the year, gonna have to try this out! Thanks for the tip. Do you add DAP/epsom salts and possibly vit B as the nettles seem to be a little low on B? pH management? I did use kale and nothing else for a sugar wash once, and it fermented like a champ even without pH management IIRC. Water, sugar, yeast, kale. Didn't like the taste that much from my VM run but I don't think it was the wash fault. Nettles look to be even better than kale. I wonder how they would store dried or in the freezer.

Osse87 wrote: ↑Wed May 21, 2025 8:49 am

MooseMan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 11:50 pm Go out and collect some stinging nettles, run them through a blender with a splash of water and add this to the yeast slurry from your last ferment, 1:1 ratio.
Don't boil it, bring it up to approx 40c and hold for an hour. Store in the fridge and add approx 50ml per gallon to your sugar washes as nutrient.

I have an abunancy of nettles where I live this time of the year, gonna have to try this out! Thanks for the tip. Do you add DAP/epsom salts and possibly vit B as the nettles seem to be a little low on B? pH management? I did use kale and nothing else for a sugar wash once, and it fermented like a champ even without pH management IIRC. Water, sugar, yeast, kale. Didn't like the taste that much from my VM run but I don't think it was the wash fault. Nettles look to be even better than kale. I wonder how they would store dried or in the freezer.

Did you do a stripping run then a slow spirit run? That's standard operating procedure for a neutral using a reflux column.

Salt Must Flow wrote: ↑Wed May 21, 2025 11:14 am

Osse87 wrote: ↑Wed May 21, 2025 8:49 am

MooseMan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 11:50 pm Go out and collect some stinging nettles, run them through a blender with a splash of water and add this to the yeast slurry from your last ferment, 1:1 ratio.
Don't boil it, bring it up to approx 40c and hold for an hour. Store in the fridge and add approx 50ml per gallon to your sugar washes as nutrient.

I have an abunancy of nettles where I live this time of the year, gonna have to try this out! Thanks for the tip. Do you add DAP/epsom salts and possibly vit B as the nettles seem to be a little low on B? pH management? I did use kale and nothing else for a sugar wash once, and it fermented like a champ even without pH management IIRC. Water, sugar, yeast, kale. Didn't like the taste that much from my VM run but I don't think it was the wash fault. Nettles look to be even better than kale. I wonder how they would store dried or in the freezer.

Did you do a stripping run then a slow spirit run? That's standard operating procedure for a neutral using a reflux column.

It was around that time I built a stripper and started with stripping runs, I don't remember if this kale wash run was before or after. Then slow reflux with a slightly leaking column. Especially leaking with volatile foreshorts/heads, then stable not leaking during hearts if not too much power applied. I was impressed with the ferment with kale however even without pH management. I've never been very happy with my neutral, maybe once or twice it's been good. I think it's me not running the slightly leaking column properly. Now I found a better way to seal the connection between boiler and column (the only place it was leaking) at any power level and hopefully can get a better product when I have better control.