Table sugar for a starter???

Yea or nay? Just boil up a simple sugar solution of ~1.040 gravity.

Nay. Beer yeast is designed to ferment maltose, not sucrose. It can and will live on it, but it won’t be optimum; and the starter made from table sugar may produce yeast that will off-flavor your beer.

Originally posted by SpringsLicker
Nay. Beer yeast is designed to ferment maltose, not sucrose. It can and will live on it, but it won’t be optimum; and the starter made from table sugar may produce yeast that will off-flavor your beer.

Basically, there is no nutrient in table sugar. You’ll end up with mutations and unhealthy yeast. Basically, you’d end up with something you really don’t want in your beer: sick yeast.

Originally posted by SpringsLicker
Nay. Beer yeast is designed to ferment maltose, not sucrose. It can and will live on it, but it won’t be optimum; and the starter made from table sugar may produce yeast that will off-flavor your beer.

Originally posted by absolutesites

Originally posted by SpringsLicker
Nay. Beer yeast is designed to ferment maltose, not sucrose. It can and will live on it, but it won’t be optimum; and the starter made from table sugar may produce yeast that will off-flavor your beer.

While this may be true, if the only purpose of a starter is to increase the cell count that you eventually pitch into your wort, then why not use table sugar?

It’s not going to produce off-flavors once the yeast start fermenting maltose.

Actually, I may try this for my next starter. Can’t believe I haven’t thought of it already.

It would likely be fine. Yeast just don’t mutate that fast. You probably won’t build up to as high a cell density though.

From Yeast by White and Zainasheff:

Use all-malt wort for starters. The sugar in the starter needs to be maltose, not simple sugar. Yeast grown exclusively on simple sugars stop making the enzyme that enables them to break down maltose. Since brewing wort is mainly maltose, fermenting it with yeast grown on simple sugar results in a beer that will not attenuate properly.

Originally posted by SamGamgee
From Yeast by White and Zainasheff:

Use all-malt wort for starters. The sugar in the starter needs to be maltose, not simple sugar. Yeast grown exclusively on simple sugars stop making the enzyme that enables them to break down maltose. Since brewing wort is mainly maltose, fermenting it with yeast grown on simple sugar results in a beer that will not attenuate properly.

Originally posted by SamGamgee
From Yeast by White and Zainasheff:

Use all-malt wort for starters. The sugar in the starter needs to be maltose, not simple sugar. Yeast grown exclusively on simple sugars stop making the enzyme that enables them to break down maltose. Since brewing wort is mainly maltose, fermenting it with yeast grown on simple sugar results in a beer that will not attenuate properly.

@asites - that’s why I made my comment above, but I did a quick literature scan and it kind of makes sense. Yeast actively repress the production of secondary metabolic genes in the presence of preferred carbon sources (like glucose and fructose). I’m not sure about how sucrose invertase is regulated, but assuming it’s produced, you would have a crapload of glucose in the system that would downregulate all of the maltose transporters and metabolic genes. They’ll come back on, but I could imagine it being sluggish.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/r8hhunmq42dgvxw0/