What is your favorite yeast for soda ?

I'd appreciate input from experienced brewers about their favorite brand/variety of yeast for soda ... and why it's a favorite.

I'm a newbie so I don't really KNOW what I want, but among other features I'm seeking a yeast that imparts very little if any yeasty flavor to my sodabrews.

Thanks in advance,
Frank in AZ

I'm interested to know as well, I was just gonna use the cheap muntons stuff.....

Me three.

I make a ginger ale that I leave out side to catch wild yeast for couple of days. Then I keg it carbonate and drink without letting it ferment any more.

I just bottled some root beer and used Saflager S-23 cause its what I had. I'll let you know in a week or so how it turned out.

I have some wild yeast harvested from partially fermented honey, it carbonates soda wonderfully, but very slowly.
If i do a large batch of soda i use Pasteur champagne yeast, but for most of my special small recipes i use the wild stuff.

We tried SAFALE US-05 Dry Ale Yeast on our last batch of herbal sodas.

1/2 tsp. yeast and 2 C. sugar-per-gallon of sodabrew.

We liked it better than RedStar Champagne yeast and a LOT better than bread yeast <g>.

The SAFALE imparted very little if any yeasty flavor, carbonated nicely in 48-72 hours @ 65+/- degrees .

Frank in AZ

I like Red Star Champagne yeast the best- it's neutral and doesn't leave a yeasty flavor behind.

How do you leave residual sugar if you are using yeasts which ferment to 10% (sometimes upwards of 20%) ABV? Is that why it should be consumed so early compared to other brews? Sorry I have never made soda. I am typically a mead maker.

mgc said:

How do you leave residual sugar if you are using yeasts which ferment to 10% (sometimes upwards of 20%) ABV? Is that why it should be consumed so early compared to other brews? Sorry I have never made soda. I am typically a mead maker.

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You stick it in the fridge when the plastic bottles feel hard. That's why it's not recommended to use glass bottles- you can't "gauge" how carbonated they are.

Yooper said:

I like Red Star Champagne yeast the best- it's neutral and doesn't leave a yeasty flavor behind.

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=== Hmmm ... isn't that strange ?
We came to the opposite conclusion.
Are you comparing it to SAFALE US-05 Dry Ale Yeast, or what ?

mgc said:

How do you leave residual sugar if you are using yeasts which ferment to 10% (sometimes upwards of 20%) ABV? Is that why it should be consumed so early compared to other brews? Sorry I have never made soda. I am typically a mead maker.

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I'm a newbie to brewing soda (or anything else).
I'd appreciate it if you could explain in a little more detail what you are talking about. I don't doubt what you say, I simply don't understand it.

Thanks,
Frank in AZ

highdesertdreams said:

I'm a newbie to brewing soda (or anything else).
I'd appreciate it if you could explain in a little more detail what you are talking about. I don't doubt what you say, I simply don't understand it.

Thanks,
Frank in AZ

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Hey Frank,

The yeast consume sugar and produce alcohol and carbon dioxide (CO2). In wine you want to convert most of the sugar to alcohol and vent the CO2, unless you want champagne style carbonation. Beer you want both, and soda you just want the CO2. I refereed to alcohol as ABV, Alcohol by Volume, its a common shorthand in wine making. Yeast can only withstand particular levels of alcohol before it starts killing them. Every yeast strain has been bread to highlight certain flavors and alcohol tolerances. A champagne style yeast imparts little flavor, but can ferment up to 15-20% ABV if it has enough sugar to do so. On the opposite side, a bread yeast will impart a really distinct flavor and probably die off at a really low ABV (~8%, although I made a mead that got up near 10% with it). Wild yeast are a gamble, because who knows what you are getting. In the fermenting world people like to order strains of yeast from their local home brew stores, that way they know what they are getting. Some people still use the old styles of just letting nature take its course, or putting some fruit skin in the brew.

In soda I typically dont want much Alcohol, but I want lots of CO2. I don't have a kegging system, so I need to use yeast to get my CO2. The trick is to kill off the yeast early so they don't ferment much sugar (something I want in my soda) but late enough that they provide some carbonation. That was the essence of my question. Yooper suggested putting it in the fridge. Yeast, like any living organism, only has a particular temperature tolerance. If we stick a fermenting beverage in the fridge (or outside if you are in a cold climate) then you will kill your yeast. For soda I am going to assume that works fine. In mead sometimes you cant guarantee that you have killed all the yeast with cold temperatures. The difference is that mead ages for years, where soda is consumed in days. If I have a little bit of yeast still alive in my mead, over years the carbonation will build up and my bottles will explode. If I have a little yeast still alive in my soda, I'm just going to call it pro-biotic and pretend its good for me.

Hope that helps clarify the situation.

Cheers, and good luck on the brews!

mgc,

Thanks for the clarification regarding yeast !

highdesertdreams said:

We tried SAFALE US-05 Dry Ale Yeast on our last batch of herbal sodas.

1/2 tsp. yeast and 2 C. sugar-per-gallon of sodabrew.

We liked it better than RedStar Champagne yeast and a LOT better than bread yeast <g>.

The SAFALE imparted very little if any yeasty flavor, carbonated nicely in 48-72 hours @ 65+/- degrees .

Frank in AZ

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Hi,
I'd like to know your results according to the yeast you used. I used liquid yeast "California WLAB V" and I have no carbonation after 7 days at 70F (21.5 C).

Usually, I use the "Lalvin ec-1118" yeast, which gives me in 5 days a perfect carbonation, but it taste bready.

Which one you have tested and what is the result?
Red Star, Saflager S-23, Safale US-05 (seems interesting) or BRY-97 American West Coast Beer Yeast?

Thanks friend
Alex from Montréal

admaltais said:

Hi,
I'd like to know your results according to the yeast you used. I used liquid yeast "California WLAB V" and I have no carbonation after 7 days at 70F (21.5 C).

Usually, I use the "Lalvin ec-1118" yeast, which gives me in 5 days a perfect carbonation, but it taste bready.

Which one you have tested and what is the result?
Red Star, Saflager S-23, Safale US-05 (seems interesting) or BRY-97 American West Coast Beer Yeast?

Thanks friend
Alex from Montréal

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I can't answer some of your results, however:
Liquid yeast typically needs to have a starter made, in order to get enough viable cells before pitching.

I would not use a lager yeast for soda--they are made to ferment at low temperatures...i.e. putting them in the refrigerator will not stall the fermentation.
Safale US-05 is a relatively neutral American Ale yeast.

FWIW my son and I made root beer a week or two ago and we switched from Fermentis/Red Star Premiere Cuvee (of unknown age) to fresh Pasteur Champage. We both felt that the resulting root beer was much better with the new yeast.

I've used Pasteur Champagne and ec-1118. It takes about 3 days to carb.

I also used a ginger bug once, but it leaves a yeasty flavor and was sloooooow. I prefer the champagne yeast.

IMPORTANT: when you refrigerate after carbonation, you are slowing the yeast down. You're not killing it. So over time it is possible that it will continue to ferment enough to explode the bottles.

ALSO, when you take them out of the fridge the yeast can wake up and go back to work. So if you give a bottle away, and your friend forgets to refrigerate, it will explode.

That's why it's called "pop." Not really.

Yes, it was about 3 days for us. We put some in PET bottles and rest in glass, then when the PET bottles got hard, we pasteurized the glass bottles and put the PET in the fridge. This is out first glass bottling of root beer. I'm storing them in a safe spot in case the yeast wakes up, but so far so good.

I was thinking this might work. How did you pasteurize the glass bottled soda? Low temp more time or high temp short time? I am not a fan of plastic and like pulling a cold bottle out of the fridge.

Read the stovetop pasteurization thread. I think we did it by heating the water to 190 and leaving it in got whatever time is documented in that thread. Remember that you have to heat the contents of the bottle to the right temp fir pasteurizatipn, not just the pan of water.

bierandbikes said:

I was thinking this might work. How did you pasteurize the glass bottled soda? Low temp more time or high temp short time? I am not a fan of plastic and like pulling a cold bottle out of the fridge.

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Like the other person said, read the 'stovetop pasteurization' thread.

I too like the feel of a nice glass bottle, and my son really got a kick out of it too.

We actually ran the capped, full bottles through the sanitation cycle of the dishwasher. So far so good, no bottle bombs. YMMV of course.