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Hi all,

I'm a total newbie at home brewing and I have been trying to understand what the effect of using different yeasts is.

I can obviously see that there are lots of different yeasts available that are recommended for different things but what would be the effect of say using wine yeast when a recipe calls for champagne yeast? or brewers yeast?

What would happen if you put wine yeast in beer? or beer yeast in wine??

Thank you in advance for any information :)

Caz

I'm no expert, but for my first attempt at homebrew (elderflower champagne) I used some baker's yeast that I happened to have in the cupboard and the result was very nice

I think the differences may be something to do with how much alcohol the different strains of yeast can tolerate, but I'm sure someone who knows what they're talking about will be along soon.

Whew - another encyclopaedic question

Right - all yeasts you'll commonly come across used in bread-making, brewing, mead-making, wine-making, anything to do with alcohol-making are the same - Saccharomyces ellipsoidius (hope I've got my spelling right). What's happened over the years is that certain strains (but same species) have been developed for certain jobs. All of them will produce alcohol and carbon dioxide, but not all of them are as good as others at specific jobs. So, Bakers' Yeast produces more CO2 than alcohol - great for bread-making. But you can still get it to produce a 10% ABV drink if you're nice to it. Brewers' Yeast is geared more to the alcohol production and, I'm informed, to specific flavours in the finished product. You could still make bread with it, though, although it may take a little longer. There are lots of Brewers' Yeast varieties. WIne yeasts - you already know what I'm going to say, don't you? - are geared towards wine production. Under normal conditions, Wine Yeasts will tend to produce a bit more alcohol than Brewers' Yeasts (but who wants a 12% ABV beer?), which tend to produce a bit more alcohol than Bakers' Yeasts.

But that all depends upon how much sugar you give 'em. They all stop producing anything if their food runs out - and that's sugar. So, if you were making an elderflower champagne, for instance (low in alcohol, so low in added sugar), you could get away with a Bakers' or Brewers' Yeast. If you want to make a super-duper strength elderberry wine at, say 17.5%, you need a good Wine Yeast, preferably developed specifically for heavy red wines (and you need to treat it like a baby).

A lot of recipes call for a Champagne yeast when it's simply not needed - it's just a bit of wine snobbery. Champagne yeast is one which is very tolerant of alcohol (which, ironically, is toxic to yeast) and tends to be used to extract the last tiny bit of sugar from a must (best Champagne's are dry, you see). That characteristic also means that it may be able to restart a "stuck" fermentation, which is the ONLY reason I would consider using it.

For 99% of all known household germs, general-purpose wine yeast will do the trick (if you're making wine, of course). Most of the rest is hype. Dunc's the man to ask about Brewer's Yeast and I'm sure he uses a few special ones. But I'd bet he says much the same thing - if you just want a pleasant beer, use the stuff everyone else is using.

Mike

Hi,

Thanks for the information :)

It's put my mind at rest a little (esp over the champagne yeast - I should have trusted my nan when she said I needn't worry!!)

I've put a new tea bag wine on now, and I think nettle beer is the next plan. I've bought some brewer's yeast (as recommended in the recipe) so hopefully will be drinkable.

As for the question of who wants a 12% beer, I'm sure my husband was nodding vigourously as he read that...

Thanks again

Caz

Also different yeast have different propensities towards making certain aldehydes and esthers in your wine - the bits that both cause certain desirable (and a few undesirable) flavours. The way they do this is also effected by the temprature they are fermented at though.

MKG wrote:Saccharomyces ellipsoidius (hope I've got my spelling right).

Saccharomyces ellipsoideus, actually, and it's just one species in the genus Saccharomyces... Most bread, wine and beer yeasts are actually Saccharomyces cerevisiae, with the exception of lager yeasts which are Saccharomyces pastorianus in the current taxonomy. (Whether pastorianus is actually a separate species or just a sub-species is something that the biologists change their minds about every few years it seems...)

You can get very involved about brewers yeast (I currently have 6 different strains in my home yeast bank), but I would generally advise holding off until you've got a really good grasp of the basics. There's generally not much point spending money on fancy specialist yeasts (and I'm not talking about different coloured sachets of Gervin wine yeast here) if you haven't got decent control of your fermentation (temperature is very important). There are some exceptions though - if you want to brew a proper German hefewiezen or Belgian dubbel, you absolutely must have the proper yeast, and there's really no point trying otherwise.

Oh, and don't use bread yeast... There's really no call for it in this day and age. If you're making wine, use a wine yeast. Exactly which wine yeast probably doesn't matter too much. And I wouldn't bother with champagne yeast unless you've got a specific need for it...

gregorach wrote:Oh, and don't use bread yeast... There's really no call for it in this day and age.

If it's what you've got in the cupboard and you have no idea where the nearest home-brew supplier is, there's a call for it! I'm not claiming it made very good wine, but some of us aren't so fussy. It tasted nice, my friends enjoyed it, and there were no apparent ill effects.

It all depends how seriously you want to take your brewing

Zech wrote:

gregorach wrote:Oh, and don't use bread yeast... There's really no call for it in this day and age.

If it's what you've got in the cupboard and you have no idea where the nearest home-brew supplier is, there's a call for it! I'm not claiming it made very good wine, but some of us aren't so fussy. It tasted nice, my friends enjoyed it, and there were no apparent ill effects.

It all depends how seriously you want to take your brewing

:) I used normal dried yeast for one of my batches this year as I'd got to the add yeast stage, none in the cupboard and none in W****s. It tastes all right. Bit less alcohol and sweeter than the other batch, but it's fine.

Zech wrote:

gregorach wrote:Oh, and don't use bread yeast... There's really no call for it in this day and age.

If it's what you've got in the cupboard and you have no idea where the nearest home-brew supplier is, there's a call for it! I'm not claiming it made very good wine, but some of us aren't so fussy. It tasted nice, my friends enjoyed it, and there were no apparent ill effects.

It all depends how seriously you want to take your brewing

Aye, fair enough I suppose. I always have a choice of yeasts in the fridge, and I have my local homebrew supplier's personal mobile number in my phone...

Oh, and I take my brewing very seriously indeed!

Thank you for all the excellent advice. I wasn't going to try bread yeast (mine doesn't even appear to be that marvellous for bread

I think that at the moment wine yeast and brewing yeast will suffice, I just want to make something drinkable and cheap (hence my satisfaction with the fruit tea bag wine!!)

Maybe in the future I'll branch out to something more fancy :)