Bread yeast wine

[jgross]

This is kind of a closed minded thread who's to say the accepted way of using only wine yeast is the only way he produced viable evidence that it is possible to use bread yeast to make acceptable wine can anybody produce proven evidence where it's not

 

[JohnT]

This is kind of a closed minded thread who's to say the accepted way of using only wine yeast is the only way he produced viable evidence that it is possible to use bread yeast to make acceptable wine can anybody produce proven evidence where it's not

First off. Welcome to the forum.

You should consider this... What may seem as "Closed Mindedness" to some just might be the "Voice of Experience" to others.

It is totally within your power to either accept or ignore any advice that we offer. If you want to experiment with bread yeast, there is nothing stopping you. You are certainly not going to hurt my feelings if you want to embrace undue risk.

If an opinion is asked, I will answer it even if I run the risk of being called "closed minded". I offer opinions in the spirit of helping beginners avoid any potential problems. My only regret is that you may be steering beginners down a very bad road.

If you feel that bread yeast (bred to be a leavening agent) is every bit as good for fermenting wine as a yeast that was cultured over the centuries for that single purpose, then we will have to "agree to disagree".

 

[rustbucket]

I used bread yeast to make balloon wine a few times for dorm parties in the late 60's when I attended college. The recipe called for a mix of Welch's grape juice, sugar, and water in a gallon Almaden wine bottle. Then bread yeast was added and a balloon was attached over the mouth of the bottle. After a few days, when the balloon popped, the wine was deemed ready to drink.

It was yeasty, sweet, and fizzy but we lapped it up and convinced each other that it was great stuff.

 

[sdelli]

I used bread yeast to make balloon wine a few times for dorm parties in the late 60's when I attended college. The recipe called for a mix of Welch's grape juice, sugar, and water in a gallon Almaden wine bottle. Then bread yeast was added and a balloon was attached over the mouth of the bottle. After a few days, when the balloon popped, the wine was deemed ready to drink.



It was yeasty, sweet, and fizzy but we lapped it up and convinced each other that it was great stuff.

Hey.... I did that too back in the 70's... Fun to watch... But back then all I wanted was alcohol... It was only about getting drunk.... Then sick!

 

[BernardSmith]

Just came across this podcast (a lot of chit chat) which contains an interesting experiment comparing the use of 71B and bread yeast to ferment a mead (orange blossom honey, I think). http://ec.libsyn.com/p/0/3/7/03778c...1ce3dae902ea1d06cc8636d0c15f4484&c_id=9571190

 

[wineforfun]

With all this said, bread yeast can have it's place. Look at JAOM for instance. I have made it a few times and it is a very unique, tasty mead.

Now I am not saying bread yeast is an alternative to other wine yeasts, just that a very respectable drink can be had by it.

 

[winetortoise]

I have to say that when I used bread yeast with my last wine, there were several of these negative factors that I did not experience.

Firstly, the wine cleared up just fine and did not remain cloudy. Secondly, it continued fermenting for several weeks, and came to be quite dry if not completely dry, with a strong alcoholic kick. Thirdly, there just weren't any off-flavors from the wine; presumably because I made sure it was in a good temperature and took good care of the brew.

This blueberry strawberry-apple wine was 3 liters (0.8) gallons with 3 pounds of sugar. The finished product is almost utterly dry, with a faint faint sweetness in the aftertaste. Sour_Grapes tells me that the calculated SG would be 1.135, resulting in 19% alcohol if fermented to dry.

Now, perhaps it isn't quite completely dry, but it sure comes close. This is some of the strongest wine and most alcoholic smelling wine I've ever tasted. I doubt that it reached 19%, and I cannot do the math on my own, so I leave it to others to decide what the alcohol content should be. However, those were the amounts of ingredients I used, and it did at least almost become dry, if not completely dry.

So, no off-flavors, no cloudiness, definitely NOT a low alcohol (I know for a fact that it is a few above 13%), and also the alcohol utterly destroyed any bready taste that might occur.

So, I have to say that based on experience, the bread yeast doesn't always have these negative qualities. It certainly did not stop fermenting alcohol at 13%, and it certainly does not taste sweet.