Sourdough Yeast

I was curious as to if this type of yeast could be used to make beer or liquor. I got some from my brother to start making bread with so I never have to buy bread again. But from what I hear I'll end up with so much of this yeast I'll have to throw some away, and was wondering if it could also be used to make Beer/Liquor.

Also is "Hooch" safe to drink?

Any response is greatly appreciated, and thanks.

Edit: Tried to google it, all i kept getting was "Start kit" results. Remembered this website for when I began making kombucha and decided to give this a whirl.

I saw a post on here the other day and the guy said the bread yeast-fermented beer was horrible. Can't seem to find that particular one but here's some other posts:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/gtsear...x8yvgpla&cof=FORID:11&q=bread+yeast&sa=Search

why not just pick up some cheap dry yeast and try that out instead of the baker's yeast.

Best,

I'll admit that I've not made my own sourdough bread, but its not only yeast you've got in your batch of dough, but lactobacillus as well, a bacteria. The lactobacillus is what gives the bread its sour flavor from the lactic acid. So the bread yeast will make something barely resembling beer, and the lacto will sour the batch of beer. Now if done properly, lacto and yeast can make very tasty beers (like berliner weiss), but I wouldn't try my lacto starter.

Normally I'd say to end it there, but since it doesn't sound like you're coming from a brewing background and are simply interested, I hate to do that. I'm also a fan of experimenting, so if you do decide to do it, I'd aim for something along the lines of a berliner weiss. First, read up on all the basics of homebrewing. Since this probably won't make very tasty beer, start with a small batch, say 1gal. If you've got a local homebrew supply store, they should have some wheat extract (contains both wheat and malt sugars). Using that and a small fermenter, you should be able to make a small batch of beer of about 3% alcohol using your sourdough starter. Since the lacto sourness will hopefully overpower any off-flavors from the bread yeast, it might actually end up drinkable, assuming you like sour beers. If you do decide to go down this path, feel free to ask more questions and the board can hopefully help to direct you a little better. Then, once you've tried that beer and found out that it wasn't very tasty at all, we can tell you how to go about making some beer you'd enjoy drinking .

I would be very curious to see an experiment done with this as well. My mom has a sour-dough starter that comes from the San Francisco area that has been in the family since 1962. If I could make up a batch of reasonably good beer using it, that would be something special.

This earlier thread had some good info
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/using-sourdough-starter-yeast-possible-393465/

I did it a year and a half ago. It was drinkable and actually not too sour...

Here is the link to a write up I made about it:
http://www.brewnosers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2216