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To Make Yeast

A method for producing yeast by boiling malt and collecting the yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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To Make Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the decoction

  1. Boil the malt in 1½ gallons of soft water for 30 minutes.

  2. Pour off the liquid and keep it warm for 24 hours.

  3. Boil more malt and add it to the first decoction.

  4. Repeat the process until you have enough yeast.

Collect the yeast

  1. Collect the yeast.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Malt
Supplies starch and enzymes that break down into sugars the yeast feeds on.
Soft water
Extracts the malt's sugars into a liquid that can be kept warm for the yeast to grow.

The step that matters

Keeping the liquid warm for 24 hours. Yeast multiplies most readily in a warm, sugary liquid. If the liquid cools too much, growth slows, and if it gets too hot, the yeast cells can be killed.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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