What would happen if you brewed beer with wine yeast?

First I have no intention of doing this but I was looking at yeast and the thought crossed my mind. What if I started a batch and it didn't start fermenting and the only thing I had around was wine yeast what would happen. Would it taste really bad or just a little off? Would it dry it more than beer yeast?

Never tried it, but would imagine it would leave the beer sweet. Most wine yeasts cannot ferment the complex sugars in beer.

It will turn into wine.

Also, never tried it, but I would have guessed the opposite - leaving the beer really dry due to consuming more sugars. I never really considered the more complex sugar aspect.

I made a barley wine based on Sam Calagione's recipe in his book extreme brewing. The recipe called for adding a wine yeast a few days after brewday along with some sugar and yeast nutrients. I think this was to help it finish fermenting out as the og was pretty high. I am still aging it so I'm not sure how turned out.

I'm unsure if I contributed anything to this thread as I'm still on my first cup of coffee and I might be rambling, but yes I have used wine yeast in my beer.

I know one of my brewing books makes a mention of experimental use of champagne yeast at bottling time on a sparkling ale. Unfortunately I couldn't find the passage from a quick skim through the index, but basically it said it would produce the same dry, effervescent character of a champagne in a beer.

I would recommend listening to the Sunday Session when Shea Comfort was on. He goes into detail about the process. There are some wine yeasts that are neutral, you want that yeast. They are able to ferment along with Sac or without it. I know 71B is that way. Its the yeast i used for my stout. The heat is the most important part. Or lack there of. You can control the amount of "wine" character in the beer.

Good luck.

Beer_Eugenics said:

It will turn into wine.

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Wort into wine? You'd be like...a hipster Jesus or something

lewybrewing said:

I would recommend listening to the Sunday Session when Shea Comfort was on. He goes into detail about the process. There are some wine yeasts that are neutral, you want that yeast. They are able to ferment along with Sac or without it. I know 71B is that way. Its the yeast i used for my stout. The heat is the most important part. Or lack there of. You can control the amount of "wine" character in the beer.

Good luck.

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^^^ This!! Most wine yeast will kill beer yeast (known as a "positive competitive factor) and must be used after the beer yeast has taken care of all the maltoses (wine yeast cannot ferment any of the maltose sugars) or by splitting the batch and fermenting seperately, then recombining prior to aging/bottling.

I've got a link showing pics of my ec 1118 honey wheat braggot. I've got to weeks and I can drink it. I used a basic wheat beer all grain recipe and equaled the grains weight in honey. I'm hoping it will taste like a honey wheat ale, with 10%+ alcohol! Give the post 2-3wks and I'll drink the first bottle, and tell you about it.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wheat-ale-ec-1118-possible-387637/

Haven't heard that wine yeast cannot ferment maltose. In addition, I believe that that a lot of wine yeast is sacc.