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thrall · 05-17-2012, 04:48 PM

Hello,

I have made loads of ciders in the past using store bought juice and it works great.

I have been trying different yeasts out and was wondering if doing the fermentation in stages has any advantage?

Just now I make 9-10% cider using wine/champagne yeasts.

I was thinking maybe starting with a beer or even a general bread yeast, let it die out and then adding the higher alcohol yeast.

Will this do anything beneficial or is it just a useless step?

downwardzspiral · 05-17-2012, 06:04 PM

If your only going to be sticking around the 9-10% area max, I wouldn't think pitching in stages would do much. It's low enough in alcohol that most yeast will chew through all the sugars no problem, and leave nothing for the second round of yeast to work on. Even if you were to pitch the second before fermentation is complete, I would assume the first yeast would easily overpower/out compete the later addition yeast which would impart little to no additional flavor.

However, if you were wanting a specific flavor profile of a specific yeast strain, but were aiming for an abv much higher than its tolerance, that's when you start with the yeast that you want the flavor profile to show through, and after it stops, then pitch a neutral flavored yeast with a high abv tolerance to finish up the fermentation with just that original flavor profile, or one with a complimenting flavor profile to add depth.

With all that being said, you could try pitching multiple yeasts simultaneously at the beginning of your 9-10% ABC cider for something a bit different. Not sure how it would turn out, but people have often asked about doing this on the beer side of the forum with the usual reply that one would always dominate (with how light cider is, I would think though that you may experience different results)

thrall · 05-17-2012, 06:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by downwardzspiral

If your only going to be sticking around the 9-10% area max, I wouldn't think pitching in stages would do much. It's low enough in alcohol that most yeast will chew through all the sugars no problem, and leave nothing for the second round of yeast to work on. Even if you were to pitch the second before fermentation is complete, I would assume the first yeast would easily overpower/out compete the later addition yeast which would impart little to no additional flavor.

However, if you were wanting a specific flavor profile of a specific yeast strain, but were aiming for an abv much higher than its tolerance, that's when you start with the yeast that you want the flavor profile to show through, and after it stops, then pitch a neutral flavored yeast with a high abv tolerance to finish up the fermentation with just that original flavor profile, or one with a complimenting flavor profile to add depth.

With all that being said, you could try pitching multiple yeasts simultaneously at the beginning of your 9-10% ABC cider for something a bit different. Not sure how it would turn out, but people have often asked about doing this on the beer side of the forum with the usual reply that one would always dominate (with how light cider is, I would think though that you may experience different results)

Would a bread yeast hit the high of 10%? I always thought it would give up at about 4-5%.

Not sure where I got that number though so im not 100% sure.

downwardzspiral · 05-18-2012, 01:31 PM

Well I've been planing on doing my first mead soon, and like most others plan on doing Joe's Ancient Orange Mead as my first. It strictly uses bread yeast, which is why it's supposedly a sweet mead, and it gets to an estimated 12-14% abv