yeast free fermentation?

hello,

I am primarily a mead maker, and have gotten a request from my sister, she is unable to eat gluten, sulfates, and most problematically, yeast. I am hoping you can help me find an alternate way to ferment, due to the fact that beer, wine, ciders, and mead are in broad strokes pretty much the same to make, I am not that picky as to the type of beverage I brew.

If anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

~Raz

razeltrushan said:

hello,

I am primarily a mead maker, and have gotten a request from my sister, she is unable to eat gluten, sulfates, and most problematically, yeast. I am hoping you can help me find an alternate way to ferment, due to the fact that beer, wine, ciders, and mead are in broad strokes pretty much the same to make, I am not that picky as to the type of beverage I brew.

If anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

~Raz

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I don't know of any kind of no yeast fermentation. Is it the yeast themselves or their by products that are bad for her? You could invest in a filtering system to get all of the yeast out of the beverage if its the yeast themselves.

Thank you very much for the quick response, I shall have to ask her for more information. I know that sake is currently brewed with koji mold, and used to be fermented with human saliva i.e. the village used to get together to chew cooked rice and spit it in a bucket then wait until it turned into sake, and I've also heard rumors of some mushroom spores being used as well. So if anyone else has any idea please let me know, and I shall respond with more information when I get it.

There are some wonderful and informational threads (pun intended) on making Sake and rice wine on this forum. I read them in awe. They don't use yeast. And they have moved on from saliva starter apparently, except maybe in those few villages where "the real authentic sake" is made.

If yeast (alive, dormant, or dead) is the problem for her, the suggestion of filtering the end product is spot on.
If live yeast causes the problem, you can pasteurize fermented products, that will kill the yeast.

I don't have anything else to add to the information side at this moment, but I feel that thanks should be mentioned for how fast, friendly, and informative the people on this forum are.

can she drink 'regular' mass produced beer? that's nearly all filtered and contains zero yeast. if she can drink that, then you can make anything, and filter it as suggested by ryush. there's plenty of information online about filtering options. if not and it's a product of the yeast that she's allergic to... i got nothing. but it's worth seeing if other non-sacchromyces yeasts give the same reaction. for example if brettanomyces is ok with her then you can make some great all-brett beers.

it's worth adding, about filtering, that you (obviously?) can't bottle condition filtered beer, so you would need to keg and filter under pressure, or find another way to force carbonate. it's fine for still ciders and meads of course

razeltrushan said:

Thank you very much for the quick response, I shall have to ask her for more information. I know that sake is currently brewed with koji mold, and used to be fermented with human saliva i.e. the village used to get together to chew cooked rice and spit it in a bucket then wait until it turned into sake, and I've also heard rumors of some mushroom spores being used as well. So if anyone else has any idea please let me know, and I shall respond with more information when I get it.

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It is still yeast that is fermenting. The chewing and saliva provide the enzymes necessary to break down the starches into simple sugars that the yeast can digest.

thank you for the correction.

I haven't heard back from my sister about if she can drink commercial beer or not, but she mentioned that the nutritional yeast that some people put on popcorn and such makes her sick, more information to come as I get it.

also, if you have heard of anything else other then yeast that can ferment sugars I would like to know, I'm pretty sure there are some out there because as far as I can recall Koji mold is what is used for sake. After looking into it a bit deeper the Koji is used for starch breakdown... it looks like I'll have to do a lot of looking to find something that can be used instead of yeast, if something like that even exists.

I think she just has to stick to distilled spirits, I'm sure any remnants of yeast get left behind in that process.

Try to find out if its just saccharomyces or other species as well 1 as soneone already pointed out, there are a few great all brettanomyces beers out there. Also, check the mad fermentationist's blog site, I seem to recall him writing about a 100% Lactobacillus sour he brewed, that might very well be an option, too.