Wine Yeast for Beer?

Well...brewday came, and I thought I had a pack of dry yeast in the fridge. Well, I did, but it was montrachet wine yeast. Ooops. LHBS was closed, so rolled the dice and pitched the wine yeast in a 1.070 stout.

Any guesses as to how this thing is going to come out??

Dry? I dunno, but my guess is if any beer makes it without too much adverse effect, it would be a stout.

My very first brew was a similar "experiment". It came out cidery, but I think that was also a direct result of not knowing how much adjuncts were appropriate in ratio to the Malt Extract.

Moral of the story is, you'll get beer. Don't worry!

khiddy said:

Moral of the story is, you'll get beer. Don't worry!

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Beer would be good.

I'm heartened by some of the comments in "Brew Like a Monk" where they talk about recognizing some of the Belgian phenolic flavors when they drink wine (and vice versa)...I assume that's from wine yeast character.

Anyway, I'm fermenting toward the bottom of the temp range to keep the yeast profile subdued.

If you go to Russian River's website you will notice that they bottle condition Damnation with wine yeast....

Many high-alcohol brews get a second round of champagne yeast to boost ABV... The difference here is you're not pitching a stout yeast in the beginning, so you'll lose the flavors your yeast would normally have provided. I still figure it will come out fine. Maybe a little unusual, but I'd be surprised if it were bad.

Just bottled this little experiment...and it's FUNKY.

There's a phenolic Belgiany nip to it, and a really flat tasting rubbery (possibly sulphurous?) taste to it. I am not sure this worked out well at all.

I had a similar reaction to Montrachet yeast flavors when I used it to make apfelwein...though I chalked up that horrific flavor to autolysis, since I left it in the primary for 6 weeks...apparently it's not autolysis, it's just montrachet.

For the record, I fermented this at 64 for two weeks, bumped it up to 70 for another week, then dropped it to 40 for a week, since it was done and I wasn't around to bottle.

I'm hoping this rubbery flavor will chill out after a while??? blech.

Anyone else noticed this flavor with Montrachet? Any more precise descriptions, or an actual explanation of what's producing this flavor would be really helpful.

I've used Montrachet with apfelwein without getting the flavors you describe. A good step would be to get a second opinion, since it's possible that either (1) something else is causing the flavors, or (2) you're particularly sensitive to something produced by this yeast.

Montrachet needs time to clean up after itself, not the typical 3 weeks like an ale yeast, more like a couple of months. Give it time, at least 6 moz before you judge it.

yeah, my understanding of a true barley wine, is that it takes a long time to mature.
the story I heard is that Sami-Claus is made every Dec 15. and is ready for sale the following Christmas. (I think that they use a bordeaux yeast).

Any follow up on this?

How did it turn out?

It was awful. But, I think that's more the fault of the yeast strain than wine yeast in general. There's something really unappealing about Montrachet yeast when it's young...and even when it's matured a bit. It has this gnarly plasticy band-aidy character to it. I've noticed it in two straight brews using it. Also, wine yeast doesn't ferment maltotriose (I think I'm remembering that right, from one of the Brew Strong shows with Shea Comfort), so it was a little sticky, a little underattenuated.

In short...blech.

I used Premier Cuvee in a Cream Ale. Turned out sulfury until it cleaned up after itself. Afterward, I would describe it as almost lager-like. It isn't bad if you're looking for a clean yeast and don't mind waiting just as long as you would with a lager beer.

I'm coming to this thread WAY late (by way of a search) and I'll just add for anyone who happens upon it that I too have encountered the rubbery character from Montrachet that wendelgee2 describes. FWIW it was my first ever attempt at fermenting anything so I probably did a lot of things wrong.

My girlfriend makes a cider using Young's all-purpose beer, wine and cider yeast that has fantastic Belgian character. I'm tempted to try it in a beer.

I brewed a standard porter a couple months ago, but my Wyeast smack pack didn't take off, so I added the only other yeast I had around at the time, which happened to be Montrachet. After three weeks in primary, I kegged it at 1.015, and kept the keg in my conditioning closet for another three weeks after purging the oxygen. I pulled the pressure release valve every day or two, and gas came out every time, so the yeast was still at work. After chilling and carbonating, I tasted it a few days ago.

It tastes pretty dry to me, but it's a pleasant beer overall. Grain notes are restrained, but there's a touch of roast. Not getting the fruitiness of an ale yeast, instead there's an interesting tartness. It turned out better than expected. It's also young, so I'm looking forward to continued tasting.

I didn't get any cidery or rubbery flavors, so I'm not sure what might have caused that in other beers. Using wine yeast in beer seems to be really hit or miss. Anyone have any further tidbits or knowledge to add? My experience was positive, overall, and it makes me want to brew more beers with unusual yeast strains.

A lot of batches ago, I killed a vial of WL liquid yeast by pitching into hot wort. The only yeast I had on hand was a dry wine yeast (green packet of dry yeast - don't recall brand), so I pitched it not wanting the wort to sit yeast-less.

Blech... It was over-attenuated and pretty funky. I seem to recall muscling my way through the batch but it was pretty strange stuff. I can't remember details but it did stick in my head as something I did not want to do again.

That being the case, I have learned to keep 4-5 packets of dry ale yeast on hand!

wendelgee2 said:

Well...brewday came, and I thought I had a pack of dry yeast in the fridge. Well, I did, but it was montrachet wine yeast. Ooops. LHBS was closed, so rolled the dice and pitched the wine yeast in a 1.070 stout.

Any guesses as to how this thing is going to come out??

Click to expand...

Montrachet throws a TON of sulfur which is why I don't use it for wine or apfelwine, use CY-1118 instead.

As for wine yeast to make beer....it won't work as the primary yeast because wine strains cannot ferment maltose or maltotriose (the main fermentables from grain), so only the simple sugars get fermented. It works for bottle conditioning because we prime with simple sugar.

You also cannot add wine yeast to already fermenting beer yeast too early in the process because the wine strain will kill the beer strain. Almost all wine strains are engineered with a positive competitive factor so that they kill off the wild yeast strains naturally present on grapes.

helibrewer said:

As for wine yeast to make beer....it won't work as the primary yeast because wine strains cannot ferment maltose or maltotriose (the main fermentables from grain), so only the simple sugars get fermented. It works for bottle conditioning because we prime with simple sugar.

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This is incorrect partially for most wine yeasts and totally for at least one wine yeast. Maltose is a disaccharide and wine yeast (which is just another strain of S. cerevisiae) will devour it. It also makes up 43% of the 'average' wort. Maltotriose is long-chain sugar and makes up roughly 13% of that 'average' wort and even that depends on the mashing profile used. Most wine yeasts (and even some ALE yeasts) won't be able to totally break down the longer chained maltotriose unless you use some added enzymes to break it down prior to fermentation (or mash such that you minimize maltotriose) however Lalvin ICV-K1 (V1116) will.

Try it. I have and just to prove the point that wine yeast will at least ferment maltose due to the misinformation I used to see constantly on this site before I stopped visiting with any regularity. I used Premier Cuvee in my little experiment and it fermented just fine. In fact, I would say it was just as dry, if not drier, as any average beer I've fermented strictly with ale or lager yeast. I used a step mash schedule to maximize maltose and minimize maltotriose.

Ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltose
http://www.swccd.edu/~mstinson/biology 100/biology 100 index/Bio100/Simple - Complex Sugars.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltotriose
http://www.danstaryeast.com/articles/wine-yeasts
http://www.brewery.org/brewery/library/EnzStuckFermAW1095.html
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=5441.20;wap2
http://www.lalvinyeast.com/images/library/ICV-K1_Yeast.pdf

See also:
http://www.babblebelt.com/newboard/thread.html?tid=1108752780&th=1275037001&pg=1&tpg=1&add=1

Arise, necro thread, because I have something to point out.

If you actually look at the Lallemand wine yeast info, 71B, 47-D, and RC212 are all competition neutral and do not have the "killer" gene--not only 71B, as seems to be commonly stated.

I am not sure if any of those will ferment maltotriose but it is a safe bet that they will continue fermenting at higher gravities than most 'beer' yeasts. I have a rather large stout that I put on a Nottingham cake that, as predicted, violently made it to 12% before stopping. After putting some Lalvin ICV-K1 (V1116) into the mix, it slowly took back off.

Post 666!

I'll pitch in a bit of info, since I am a Winemaker by trade. Most wine yeasts have some competitive factor, K1 is one our boss will NOT allow into the winery because he called it a "Killer" strain, and dominates, gets into everything. That said, we use a yeast called Uvaferm 43 which has slight esters, but is able to ferment at pretty high temps, up to 95F. Our ciders are fermented with DV-10 yeast, which get down around .5 to .25 RS every batch. Good enough. Nice thing about DV-10 yeast is it is a yeast that does ferments pretty cleanly with the additions of superfood and DAP to the cider. If you subject a fermentation to lack of nitrogen, I can guarantee sulfur smells and H2SO4. We centrifuge the finished wine (done with their fermentation) or rack, and add 0.4 ppm CuSO4 (copper sulfate) to red wines and 0.2 ppm copper sulfate to the white wines. This binds with the mercaptans and settles out in the lees. The longer you wait, the less chance you have of binding up those smells. We use 10% solution on larger tanks, and 1% solution on small containers like 15, 5 and 1 gallon containers. Without it, you end up with that "rubbery" smell.

I think DV-10 or PDM yeast that we use for sparkling wine would work in yeast. Our Food Science major, Matt, also our Asst. Winemaker, says that Maltose is very easily fermented by yeast.

Profile of DV-10 yeast here: http://www.scottlab.com/product-56.aspx
We buy it in 10Kilo boxes.... lots of them.

Oh boy, I've got some of this montrachet fermenting a beer in the pantry now. It's just regular red star wine yeast. I wonder if I added beer yeast to it as well what would happen? It's in the primary fermenter now, with quite a bit of residue at the bottom.