Weird Question

[FrameofLightDesigner]

What kind of alcohol does bread yeast make?

This question came up because I breed fish. This requires many things. The raising of things to feed the fry. I personally raise Daphnia Magna, and they eat yeast culture as a form of sustenance. So I have a yeast culture with bread yeast going so that I can feed them. One evening I was caring for the yeast culture and my partner noticed that it smelled like apple cider, so he tried it and it actually tasted quite good.

It got us to talking, It obviously created alcohol, of this we are aware. Question is, in what manner could we ever use this in our brewing work?

 

[sour_grapes]

Bread yeast and wine yeast are the same species, viz., Saccharomyces cerevisiae. They make ethanol.

The difference between bread yeast and wine yeast may be likened to the difference between collies and pit bulls. The characteristics of bread yeast are good for making bread, but not as good for making wine.

I am unclear on what your question is regarding how can you use this in your brewing work? What are you asking?

 

[FrameofLightDesigner]

So this is his partner.... the one who smelled and tried the concoction. I see your response that it is Ethanol being made. What I have in the jar, would this be like the first half of making distilled liquor prior to the distilling process? What type of alcohol in the liquor store would this be compared to? Rum? Vodka? etc??

Benjamin

 

[sour_grapes]

So this is his partner.... the one who smelled and tried the concoction. I see your response that it is Ethanol being made. What I have in the jar, would this be like the first half of making distilled liquor prior to the distilling process? What type of alcohol in the liquor store would this be compared to? Rum? Vodka? etc??

Benjamin

Hi, Benjamin!

First, I should tell you that we don't discuss distillation on this site. At all. But yes, distilled liquor gets it start by fermenting sugar- or starch-containing feedstocks.

What you are producing is ethanol. So the chemical is the same, regardless of the feedstock. Flavors will differ by feedstock, of course.

What is the feedstock you are using? Is it wheat flour? If so, and if you forced me to answer the original question, I would say it is most similar to beer.

 

[G259]

At ~$1 a packet (for 5 gal.), please use wine yeast for making wine! Using bread yeast will get you drunk, but that's about it!

 

[Johnd]

What kind of alcohol does bread yeast make?

This question came up because I breed fish.

What kind of fish are you breeding and raising?

 

[Sailor323]

While all the Saccharomyces cerevisiae will produce alcohol and CO2, some strains are better than others for various reasons. In bread baking, some are quicker acting, some tolerate higher temps, some have flavor special characteristics. In wine and beer making, some produce firmer lees, some accentuate certain flavors in the resulting beer or wine, some tolerate higher alcohol content, some work better at low temps and some at higher temps, some are top fermenting and some are bottom fermenting, etc. Nevertheless, they can all be used to produce alcohol. I'd stick with strains produced specifically for use in winemaking when making wine and strains produced for beer/ale making for beer and aale.

 

[BernardSmith]

So this is his partner.... the one who smelled and tried the concoction. I see your response that it is Ethanol being made. What I have in the jar, would this be like the first half of making distilled liquor prior to the distilling process? What type of alcohol in the liquor store would this be compared to? Rum? Vodka? etc??

Benjamin

What you probably have in the jar is a beer-like substance since you are making alcohol from grains. While this forum does not discuss distillation, the fact of the matter is that distillation is a method of concentrating alcohol made from fruit, grains or honey by boiling off the water that makes up 95 - 85 % of the beer, wine or mead. Rum and vodka or whisky have very little water in them because of the process used to remove the water from the alcohol (AKA ethanol). For the record, brandy is distilled wine; whisky is distilled beer, and rum is distilled wine made from sugar cane. Vodka is (I think) anything that is distilled so much that there is essentially no character remaining from the beer or wine from which it was made. The myth that vodka is made from potatoes is precisely that - a myth - because given the amount of sugars that you can obtain from potatoes compared to grains you would only use potatoes if that was all you had. It's an inefficient source of fermentable sugars - but you CAN make a potato wine though you would need to add a fair amount of fermentable sugar to the potatoes. All that said, yeast can basically ferment simple sugars like fructose, glucose, sucrose (and one or two other sugars). Starches (grains and potatoes) are complex sugars and they need to be broken down into simpler sugars by enzymes. BUT even wheat has a few molecules of simple sugars which is what the yeast eats when you make bread, leaving you with the proteins and starches.

 

[BernardSmith]

While this forum does not discuss distillation, the fact of the matter is that distillation is a method of concentrating alcohol made from fruit, grains or honey by boiling off the water that makes up 95 - 85 % of the beer, wine or mead.

I mis-wrote. Distillation does not in fact "boil off the water". Quite the opposite. It works by heating wine or beer to boil which becomes a gas (boils) at a lower temperature than water. The gas vapors from the boiling alcohol are then condensed back into a liquid by cooling and that liquid is collected, leaving behind the water.