Advice on Cranberry Pomegranate Wine

Hi guys, up until now I've been doing 4.5 to 6.5 gallon batches of beer, cider, mead, and so on (no wines made from grapes yet), but I've been thinking of doing my first 1 gallon batch as a kind of experiment, but I have a few questions. Partially for advice and partially just questions about things I'm unfamiliar with.

1) I have two dry yeasts in my refrigerator. One is a Bordeaux red wine yeast and the other is Safale US-05 (a very clean American beer yeast). I bought the Bordeaux red wine yeast specifically for the cranberry pomegranate wine, but I've heard of people using US-05 on ciders and other fruit wines, so I was wondering what the benefits and disadvantages of using US-05 would be. I didn't really have any research in picking the Bordeaux yeast. It just seemed like it would go nicely with what I'm planning.

2) Every yeast I've used so far has had a pretty narrow range for "optimum fermentation temperature." Beers usually say "66 to 68," "64 to 70," "70 to 74," and so on. The cider yeasts I've used have similarly been narrow, "68 to 72." I even recently used a white wine yeast that had "70 to 75" as the optimum fermentation temperature. But the Bordeaux red wine yeast I bought has an optimum temperature on it of "62 to 86." That's a 24 degree span across the optimum temperature range. I find it hard to believe that fermenting it at 62 degrees and fermenting it at 86 degrees are equally optimal. Can anyone explain about this? I did Google searches and searches on HBT, but couldn't find any details other than very vague things about red wines usually being fermented at warmer temperatures than white wines, beers, and so on.

3) Other than the yeast, the only things I'm planning on adding before pitching are yeast nutrient (DAP and urea) and pectic enzyme. I'm not planning on using any campden tablets as it's only 1 gallon and I'm doing it as a relatively cheap experiment to see what kind of a result I can get.

4) If anyone else has done anything like this before (which I would assume many of you have), any advice of any kind would be greatly welcome. Thanks!

A pinch of tannin would balance it out nicely. As well as help color retention and clearing.
Use wine yeast for wine. Its very forgiving and foolproof. It has been cultivated for fermenting wine for centeries. It knows its job and does it well. Yes, it does have a wide range of temp tolerances. Given even the slightest chance it will happily ferment. Its not too picky After all, would you set aside your beer yeast and use bread yeast for your beer?

One galleon batches are fun. I often just drink them and don't even bother bottleing them. Saves on corks!


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jensmith said:

A pinch of tannin would balance it out nicely. As well as help color retention and clearing.
Use wine yeast for wine. Its very forgiving and foolproof. It has been cultivated for fermenting wine for centeries. It knows its job and does it well. Yes, it does have a wide range of temp tolerances. Given even the slightest chance it will happily ferment. Its not too picky After all, would you set aside your beer yeast and use bread yeast for your beer?

One galleon batches are fun. I often just drink them and don't even bother bottleing them. Saves on corks!


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You are, of course, right that I would not use bread yeast for my beer, and the whole reason I bought the red wine yeast was to use it on this wine. I was just curious about the effect that using beer yeast has since I had heard of people using beer yeast on some ciders and other fruit wines.

About the wide range of temp tolerances, does that mean that a red wine fermented in the low 60s and a red wine in the low to mid 80s would taste essentially the same? I ask because my experience with yeast in everything I've made so far has shown that even a 5 degree temperature increase can result in significantly more esters and a 10 degree temperature increase can result in off-flavors and fusel alcohols. I realize that I probably won't have to do the obsessive and meticulous temperature control I do on my beers for any wines, and I'm guessing that most red wine yeasts just don't have that problem? Or that it only occurs at a very high temperature such as above 86F?

I made the cranberry pomegranate wine this morning and, as this is my first 1 gallon batch, I don't know if this is normal, but the fermentation took off within 4 hours of me pitching the yeast. I've had one beer (a 5 gallon Belgian abbey ale) that started that quickly, but generally the quickest a fermentation starts for me is 6 hours. Since then, the fermentation has been ramping up and ramping up and ramping up, as one would expect of something fermented at such a warm temperature. I can't smell any odd by-products or off-smells, so it seems that the yeast really doesn't produce anything unpleasant at such high temperatures (well, high for beers, at least. This is the first time I've ever used a red wine yeast before.).

I think the thing about different yeasts is that they both bring out and create very specific flavor profiles. The idea is then to enhance the flavors and aromas of the specific fruits you are fermenting rather than inhibit or ignore those qualities or at the very least to use a yeast deliberately to produce a specific profile. So, for example, many folk simply toss champagne yeasts into their cider or fruit musts but such yeasts act like sledge-hammers.
See for example: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/strains.asp
Can you use a beer yeast to produce an interesting and complex wine. I am sure you can - but you might want to experiment with small batches comparing the flavor, color, and aroma profiles that result with the use of different yeasts on similar batches of must. For example, I have use Nottingham to make cider but personally I prefer 71B because of the way it works with the malic acids in the apples... LoveofRose (another member of this forum) routinely uses an ale yeast to ferment his meads (see recipe and technique for making BOMM) but according to the owner of my LHBS Ken Shramm , swears by 71B

With enough ageing any minor tast diferences in fermenting temp and yeast selection become hard to detect. Even six months is long enough to mellow out flavors. I find the strongest differences in yeast selection to be in the first few months. After that the fruit flavor over rides minute differences.
I have not found any bad flavors that could be blamed on fermenting temps using wine yeast. Your biggest problems will be cold temp have very slow fermentation speeds. Not a big problem. High temps have a fast fermention speed, so fast that you don't get good fruit flavor extration if you rack when 'done'. Best left on the fruit at least 4-6 days even if fermented dry. Or at least rack with generouse sedament and rerack after a week or two.
I have not used beer yeast in any of my wines. I have heard and read that beer yeast does not always ferment dry or clear. It can also leave a different flavor profile then wine yeast. I am sure that depends on which beer yeast you used.
No insult intended, but hard cider is different then "wine". Often brewed to be more beer like then wine like. Maybe they like the yeasty flavor that beer yeast can leave.

I'm not teckinal so maybe someone who is can speak up on the differrnces of beer and wine yeast. (nore can I spell!!)


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The wine certainly smells really good. I wonder how much of the cranberry and pomegranate flavors will be left when it's done.

One thing I've noticed that I find really interesting is how quickly the color has changed. I know that different yeasts have different effects on color and I've even seen tests where the same 5 gallon batch of beer was split into 5 different 1 gallon fermenters with a different yeast pitched into each one and in the end the color was different for every one of them (only slightly different for some, drastically different for others), but I never considered the effect it would have on dark fruit wines like red wines, for example.

As far as cider goes, I've personally never used beer yeast on cider, although I know that a ton of people do (Nottingham seems to be a particularly popular beer yeast that's used for ciders). I've used "cider yeast" (i.e. yeast that has been cultivated for centuries to ferment ciders) and white wine yeast. As a result, all of the ciders I've made have been very dry (the last cider I made had a final gravity of 0.991). Although some beer yeasts can be "yeasty" such as Belgian ale yeasts, I've never heard of them being used on ciders, but I'm hardly an expert on the subject.

Worlddivides, can you share your cranberry pomegranate wine recipe? Have you tasted it yet?