Imagine the most tired you’ve ever been. Perhaps it was after a long bike ride in the mountains, while changing planes en route from Dubai to Dulles, or the morning after a long evening spent hatching plans with friends over copious amounts of homebrew. Regardless of how you got there, your body probably loudly and clearly demanded a few things of you. Food, water, and nutrition are critical to our survival, and the same is true for yeast.
Yes, yeasts, those amazing little critters that transform wort into beer, require certain things in order to do their jobs. Like people, they simply perform better when they have optimal nutrition. Fortunately for them (and, indirectly, for us), wort offers a smorgasbord of delights that yeast just can’t resist. All-malt wort contains the following parts of a complete breakfast for your yeast:
- Sugar
- Nitrogen
- Vitamins
- Phosphorous
- Trace metal
Whether you brew from grain or from malt extract, you can rest assured that these critical components are already in there.