gavin wrote:
"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"gavin" writes:
| "Rusty Hinge 2" wrote in message
| k...
|
| AFAIK there's precious little sugar in parsnips which is directly
| fermentable by wine yeast.
|
| You add the sugar for the yeast to ferment. Any sugar in the parsnips
is
| a bonus - probably.
|
| Correct! But as I said I think there will be little sugar in parsnips
which
| Saccharomyces cerevisiae can ferment.

Stick to your 'directly'. Yeast can also use starch, but the mechanism
involves quite a lot more complexity in converting it to sugar.

That depends on the strain of yeast. Years ago one of the home winemaking
supply producers used to market a yeast which would ferment a proportion of
starch and so was great for rice wine and similar.

The usual technique with starch is to use an enzyme to break it down
into sugars before fermentation. It's called brewing and is what is done
for beer.

The problem with starches is that they take a _really_ long time to
ferment. I also seem to remember that they are insoluble in water and
tend to settle out.

Weren't parsnips a source for that sweetener saccharin?

dan