Olive Oil in my starter!

[ChristinaS1]

There is a theory out there that yeast can be fed tiny amounts of olive oil in starters, instead of oxygenating wort. Olive oil contains oleic acid, an UFA that yeast synthesize from oxygen.

 

https://byo.com/malt/item/1206-olive-oil-aeration

 

I guess some breweries have tried olive oil to see if they can make their beer more shelf stable.

 

I had a little brewing mishap the other day and am unintentionally giving this method a try. I was making a starter for a porter I am brewer. It was a Shaken not Stirred (SNS) starter made with 7gm of rehydrated Coopers Ale yeast. Normally I use two 7gm packs of yeast when I brew, but I only had one in the house; hence the starter. I have made SNS starters from the Coopers ale/lager yeast several times, but this was my first effort with 100% Coopers yeast.

 

When I was making the starter wort, I recklessly grabbed a kitchen pot to boil it in, instead of digging out a brewing pot. When I cooled the wort I notice a bit of oil floating on top. Oops. IIRC the pot had last been used to make pasta, to which we always add some olive oil; obviously traces of oil had not been removed during washing. Anyway, the time was up on my rehydrating yeast; it needed to be pitched. I decided now was as good as time as any to give brewing with olive oil a try. I used a spoon to scoop off as much of the oil as I could and then pitched my yeast into the the starter. I still shook it vigorously, as per the Shaken not Stirred starter method, so the yeast would have gotten both oxygen and oil olive.

 

Anyway, not sure exactly when it started, but the starter had krausen and vigorous airlock activity when I checked it five hours later, and by morning (11 hours later) it had already fermented out. Normally with the ale/lager blend it is at high krausen at that point, not finished. Not sure if the speed is because of the oil olive or because it was pure Coopers yeast instead of the blend, but it is interesting.

 

I will be curious to see how the brew turns out, if there are any taste differences, and if there are any head retention issues. If so, it could also be because the recipe has oats in it, which can negatively affect head retention.

 

Has anyone else tried using olive oil in their starters, or wort?

 

Cheers,

 

Christina.

[BlackSands]

... the starter had krausen and vigorous airlock activity when I checked it five hours later' date=' and by morning [b'](11 hours later) it had already fermented out[/b]

That's gotta be some kind of record! What was the OG?

 

Can't say I've heard of this olive oil thing, so will be watching with interest.

[ben 10]

I have heard of the olive oil thing but have not tried it.

 

It's funny the head retention thing isn't it?

Fats can have negative consequences but hop oils positive.

[ChristinaS1]

... the starter had krausen and vigorous airlock activity when I checked it five hours later' date=' and by morning [b'](11 hours later) it had already fermented out[/b]

That's gotta be some kind of record! What was the OG?

 

Can't say I've heard of this olive oil thing, so will be watching with interest.

 

It was the standard 100gm of DME made up to 1L, with water.

 

Cheers,

 

Christina.

 

[ChristinaS1]

It's funny the head retention thing isn't it?

Fats can have negative consequences but hop oils positive.

 

Yes, funny.

 

Cheers,

 

Christina.

[ChristinaS1]

Hi all. Resurrecting a zombie thread. 

I have gotten into making no knead breads of late, as per Jim Lahey's recipe. I have not made that many loaves yet and am still experimenting. For most I have actually used a 1:1 ratio of water to milk for the liquid, instead of all water, to help the bread stay fresh longer. Anyway, although the bread tastes okay, I have been a little disappointed with how much they have risen, which I had been putting down to our house being on the cool side (it is still winter here in Canada).

Last evening I went to put on another loaf of bread and discovered we only had a couple of ounces of milk in the house, so I had to use mostly water. I had seen a couple of variations on the basic no knead recipe which included a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. I decided this was as good a time as any to give that a try and added one tablespoon of EVOO. While I have not baked the bread yet I was surprised to see when I came down this morning that the dough has risen much more overnight than any of my previous efforts....In addition, my wife tried a new Paleo (meaning no flour / gluten free) pizza crust recipe recently with a bizarre method of preparing the yeast, which was to start the yeast in olive oil and honey instead of water and sugar. It turned out to be her best Paleo pizza crust so far.  So anyway, this has me thinking again about adding a tiny drop of EVOO to my starters or brews, which I never tried again after my unintentional use of it in 2017.

Cheers,

Christina. 

[Hairy]

I had to look that one up: Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

I had never seen it referred to as EVOO before.

[Naughty Corner Brewing]

Hmmm. Interesting thought. I’ve used a small amount in bread starters as well but never really given it a thought for beer because I was always told to keep anything oily away from beer.

Thinking on it now, most of the extract we get from hops is oil based, so as long as the amount was small and well mixed in it may go ok.

Not sure it would need to be nearly homogenised for it not to seperate out once it hit the beer.

Surely someone on here has a microbiology degree and can answer that one?

[The Captain!!]

Experimental Homebrew did this experiment in beer a long time ago which I’m pretty sure defunct the myth. 

Its a pretty cool podcast for those interested.

podcast not linked but you’ll be able to find it from there

https://www.experimentalbrew.com/experiments/writeups/writeup-olive-oil-vs-no-aeration

[Titan]

10 hours ago, Hairy said:

I had to look that one up: Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

I had never seen it referred to as EVOO before.

Thanks for the clarification Hairy, must admit i was confused. Now this might pose an interesting debate. Every time i use my GF i find that getting the top and bottom plates in without detaching the seal is a pain in the ass. Adds half hour to my brew day. What would the effect be if i rubbed the silicon rings with EVOO to set them.?

[Titan]

Sorry, answered the previous post without reading further down. I might give this a shot.

[Hairy]

2 minutes ago, Titan said:

Thanks for the clarification Hairy, must admit i was confused. Now this might pose an interesting debate. Every time i use my GF i find that getting the top and bottom plates in without detaching the seal is a pain in the ass. Adds half hour to my brew day. What would the effect be if i rubbed the silicon rings with EVOO to set them.?

The tiny amount you would use for that wouldn’t cause any problems.

I have one of the early GF models and my bottom plate doesn’t have a silicon seal. The top plate does but I have never had an issue with it. It isn’t that tight.

[Popo the Reprobate]

21 minutes ago, Titan said:

Every time i use my GF i find that getting the top and bottom plates in without detaching the seal is a pain in the ass. Adds half hour to my brew day.

That bottom one really p!sses me off sometimes. I might give that a go too.

[Shamus O'Sean]

Don't the Coopers brewing videos tell us to use a little bit of olive oil on the newer slide in tap seals?  I do this all the time.  I think they say do not worry about the oil and that yeast loves it.

Not that anybody is suggesting to add half a litre, but a small amount to lubricate parts in the brewing process sound like they will not cause any issues.

Cheers Shamus

[ChristinaS1]

12 hours ago, The Captain!! said:

Experimental Homebrew did this experiment in beer a long time ago which I’m pretty sure defunct the myth. 

Its a pretty cool podcast for those interested.

podcast not linked but you’ll be able to find it from there

https://www.experimentalbrew.com/experiments/writeups/writeup-olive-oil-vs-no-aeration

I must be dunce. I could not find the podcast. The write up linked to said the experiment was in episode 13, but that is about Saisons. I could not find a search option either.

Did you listen to the podcast Captain? If so, can you tell me what kind of yeast they used? If by any chance it was a dry yeast, like US-05, I would not expect there to be any difference between the two brews as you don't need to aerate the first generation anyway. The manufacturer packages them with an abundant store of trehalose.

If they used a liquid yeast, I would like to know if they made a starter. Ideally they did not, as this would be a better test.

If they did make a starter, what method did they use? Did they use the same starter method for both batches? Seems to me that if they made a starter with a stir plate for both batches, that would obscure any differences.

Cheers,

Christina

 

[ChristinaS1]

Okay, finally found it. They used 1056. In both arms of the experiment the wort was not aerated, except for what happened during transfer. That being the case, I am willing to accept that olive oil does not make a difference; however, they did not mention whether they made a starter or not (OG 1.056). Since they did not mention it, I am assuming that they did not. But if they did, and they used a stir plate to make the starter, I would question the results. 

The other thing I wonder about is that they put the 50 microliters of olive oil in vodka prior to adding it to the wort. Since that is a very small amount, the full dose may not have made it to the wort / stayed behind in the glass. 

Christina.

[The Captain!!]

3 hours ago, ChristinaS1 said:

used a stir plate to make the starter, I would question the results. 

I understand what your saying here Christina. 

When I first heard of people putting olive oil in FV I honestly thought straight away, “what are they thinking!”

Then this podcast explains why Homebrewers basically Chinese whispered it to being a bit more than what the original study found. Being that there is simply the something like the same nutrients in 50 microlitres of olive oil that would be the same amount required to ferment a standard batch of beer. That quote is from memory not from the actual podcast. Ha ha ha. I was about a year or so ago I listened to it. 

I honestly don’t think that oxygen can be replaced by olive oil. If it could I’m sure AB InBev would be all over it. 

[ChristinaS1]

On 3/15/2019 at 8:07 PM, The Captain!! said:

I honestly don’t think that oxygen can be replaced by olive oil. If it could I’m sure AB InBev would be all over it. 

Yes, I think you are on to something there Captain. It just occurred to me that they might be sourcing their sterols from elsewhere: dead yeast. Fermaid K, Fermaid O, Servomyces, GoFerm, and many other yeast nutrients are made from fractionated dead yeast cells (yeast hulls / ghost cells) which, like EVOO, contain sterols and UFA. But the thing dead yeast have over Olive Oil is that they also contain amino acids (nitrogen), and vitamins, so offer more complete nutrition. Yeast can scavenge what they need from dead yeast, rather than having to manufacture it using oxygen, which is one reason I like the sloppy slurry method. 

That being said, it seems commercial brewers prefer rinsing yeast, and using oxygen. Not sure why. Wine, and especially mead makers are much more likely to use nutrients, but they don't do anything special to add oxygen to the must before pitching, which is interesting because they are dealing with much higher gravities.....When I make wine, I make my own yeast nutrient by boiling bread yeast, to kill it and turn it into ghost cells. Brewers yeast can also be used to make ghost cells.

Cheers,

Christina.