Champagne Wheat

[BenjaminBier]

Prost!
Summer is coming up and we've got just a few more months until we're sipping homebrew on hot August nights.

I'm thinking about brewing up an appley sparkling cider with a bit of extra body and haze from wheat. And maybe even top it off with a tiny bit of horsey funk, a beer for after a day at the county fair.

Does anyone know what happens if you ferment a Wheatbeer wort with a champagne yeast? Having only used champagne yeast in Edwort's Apfelwein and a Mead, my experience is only that it dries out pretty well. Does it have the similar effects on wort as it does on juice?

I'm thinking of blending this Champagne Wheat with a bit of Edwort's Apfelwein as a shandy, or maybe just mixing the wort and the must together and fermenting as a batch. Bottling with dregs and wheat DME for the carbonation.

Am I brewing ass-water?

 

[aggiejay06]

I've never used it, but my guess would be you would get a drier, higher ABV brew than with an ale yeast. It would certainly have a unique flavor, but I doubt you'd be brewing "ass-water" .

 

[Inodoro_Pereyra]

I love champagne yeast!
It's tough as nails (never even bothered to make a starter with it. Just pitch it dry, and I guarantee you you'll have bubbles within 30 minutes.), makes no head whatsoever, and you can safely go up to 18% ABV with it.
I've never brewed beer yet, so I can't tell you how it'd behave in wort, but, at least in wine, I find it to be (as per my own experience, meaning I may be wrong) less fruity than, for example, Montrachet. Other than that, taste wise, I never found much of a difference.

 

[JLem]

it's not the champagne yeast that dried out the wine, Apfelwein, or mead, its the sugars present for the yeast to "eat". Ciders, wines and meads are mostly simple sugars so the yeast have no problem consuming them all and drying out the beverage. An ale yeast would do pretty much the same thing. In grain-based wort though you have a much more complex mixture of sugars and other carbohydrates, some of which are unfermentable, so the brew doesn't finish as dry. Using the champagne yeast in a normal gravity beer will not get you any drier than a typical ale yeast - in fact, it may end up higher since wine yeast strains cannot ferment maltotriose, yet beer strains can.

The champagne yeast will impart its own flavors of course.

I fermented an all-grain beer with a red wine yeast and it only went from 1.054 down to 1.022.

If you are interested in trying this sort of thing I would recommend listening the the Brewing Network podcast on brewing with wine yeast with Shea Comfort - just search their site and I'm sure you will fine it - http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/

 

[BenjaminBier]

it's not the champagne yeast that dried out the wine, Apfelwein, or mead, its the sugars present for the yeast to "eat". Ciders, wines and meads are mostly simple sugars so the yeast have no problem consuming them all and drying out the beverage. An ale yeast would do pretty much the same thing. In grain-based wort though you have a much more complex mixture of sugars and other carbohydrates, some of which are unfermentable, so the brew doesn't finish as dry. Using the champagne yeast in a normal gravity beer will not get you any drier than a typical ale yeast - in fact, it may end up higher since wine yeast strains cannot ferment maltotriose, yet beer strains can.

The champagne yeast will impart its own flavors of course.

I fermented an all-grain beer with a red wine yeast and it only went from 1.054 down to 1.022.

If you are interested in trying this sort of thing I would recommend listening the the Brewing Network podcast on brewing with wine yeast with Shea Comfort - just search their site and I'm sure you will fine it - http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/

Thank you so much for the imput! That's really useful info about the yeast and sugars. I'm going to check out that episode when I get home.

I found the full link btw: http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/The-Sunday-Session/The-Sunday-Session-11-23-08-Shea-Comfort

 

[JLem]

Thank you so much for the imput! That's really useful info about the yeast and sugars. I'm going to check out that episode when I get home.

I found the full link btw: http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/The-Sunday-Session/The-Sunday-Session-11-23-08-Shea-Comfort

Yep, that's the one...it is chock full of info - not just on wine yeasts, but also on using oak. One of the best shows I've heard.

 

[iron_city_ap]

Try something along these lines, and use the champagne yeast.

 

[BenjaminBier]

Try something along these lines, and use the champagne yeast.

Iron_city_ap was right!