Lager yeast in wine?

Hi all,

I came across some high end smoothies (outdated at work) with no preservatives, nothing but fruit puree so i grabbed them. There's just over 3 gallons of the stuff there and I'm itching to get it fermenting.

My question is if I can use some lager yeast that I have kicking around here? The yeast is Saflager 34/70. Also, if its ok to use lager yeast for this wine, will one 11g packet be enough?

Thanks for any help...

ipe:

Dooooooooooooooo iiiiiiit!

Found this for you - https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=94018

So I guess you can!

The only issue I can think of is alcohol tolerance for the 34/70 yeast. A quick google says tolerant up to 9%. A wine yeast will get you higher but if you like sweet wine go for it.

I pitched the yeast on this just now...

I made a 2L starter, crashed and decanted. Then stepped with another 2L starter wort, crashed and decanted then pitched all but a WL vial full into the 3-3.5 gallons or so of smoothies that had been topped to 5 gallons. I also added a few lbs of strawberries and clementines and 2 bananas that were in my freezer, and a lb-ish of demerara sugar. O.G. was somewhere around 1.045 - 1.050. The must was very viscus which made it hard to get a reading. I had campden bombed it 30ish hours prior and pectic enzymed it 15ish hours after the campden. I chilled to 8c and raised it to 10c after pitching.

I've got next to no money involved with this one so it doesn't matter too much but I am curious to find out how the lager yeast will work (or not) in a wine-ish bevvie.

I am planning on doing a d-rest at maybe 1.010 as I think it'll go below 1.000 before it stops.

Any thoughts on what I got going on? Tips or advice is greatly appreciated as I've never used a lager yeast before at all lol...

I think the high viscosity may be a bit of an issue but I can't say exactly why, just seems like you'd be quite susceptible to stratification of the sugar/water/alcohol during the fermentation. Either way should be interesting.

Yeah, not really sure but I took the reading before the pectic enzyme and when I aerated just prior to pitching (many hours after the PE), the must seemed much "thinner". I probably should have took another gravity reading but that didn't happen lol.

Its been pumping away nicely all day, smells awesome...

Ok, just an update if anyone is interested:


I've been stirring the wine (knocking down the cap) and squeezing the juice out of the fruit bag twice a day since pitching. Last night I gave the must one final stir and squeezed and removed the fruit bag. With that I snapped down the lid on the pail and bumped the temp from 10c to 12c to let the yeast finish up.


It still smells wonderful, its kinda taken on a pineapple smell

Took a gravity sample just now. SG is at 1.000 at 13.5c and the flavours are awesome. I think i'll soon transfer to a carboy and give it some age and settle time.

This begs the question of whether I should bulk age at coolish room temp like I normally would with ale or wine yeast? Or if I should bulk age at lager temps (close to 0c)? Or will it even matter?

Racked this bad boy to secondary today and my god, its delicious! Super fruity with a tropical fruit tartness and a smooth banana finish. It almost tastes like the must before fermentation, minus the sugar of course. Seems that most of the fruit flavours made it through the cold fermentation beautifully. Its resting comfortably at 12c right now and in a few days, i'll start to lower the temp for a bit of "lagering"...