anyone ever personally use champagne yeast?

[NJbeer]

Has anyone ever actually tried fermenting beer with champagne yeast? I know everyone will say it wont come out good, it will be very dry, but has anyone here actually tried it(or have you only read about it)?

 

[kcmobrewer]

I've used it. Didn't have any issues. Although it was used with the sole purpose of producing an 18% abv beer.


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[zoomzilla]

I had a huge scotch ale stall at 1.050 so I pitched a pack of champagne yeast and dried it right up. Its been on the yeast cake three months and I just kegged it today. I am cask carbonating but I hope to drink it at Christmas.

 

[orangehero]

Wine yeast doesn't ferment maltose.

 

[pdxal]

Champagne yeast will handle high alcohol, but won't create a lot of complexity in my experience. Won't ferment maltose. Kills other yeast due to a competitive factor.

 

[NJbeer]

Champagne yeast will handle high alcohol, but won't create a lot of complexity in my experience. Won't ferment maltose. Kills other yeast due to a competitive factor.

so you are suggesting if i boil a pound of DME in a gallon of water and add champagne yeast....it wont ferment?

 

[orangehero]

We're suggesting that you probably should not do that. Wort contains a mixture of mono and polysaccharides, with maltose being the most abundant. Wine yeast will ferment wort to a limited degree (basically the glucose, fructose, and sucrose).

 

[pdxal]

so you are suggesting if i boil a pound of DME in a gallon of water and add champagne yeast....it wont ferment?

What Orangehero said.
It will ferment wort, but not well. Wort contains a mixture of sugars, champagne yeast won't ferment all of them, only some.
Give it a try and see what happens, do a $5 experiment.

 

[dbsmith]

Wine yeast doesn't ferment maltose.

Are you sure about that? I can understand if they aren't as efficient as brewing yeasts which are selected for maltose metabolism efficiency, but I find it hard to believe that they simply cannot metabolize maltose.

 

[mozart4898]

Haven't used it as the primary (only) yeast in a beer, but I used champagne yeast in my last Russian Imperial Stout that finished in the mid 12% - low 13% ABV range. I tossed in one pack well after any visible signs of fermentation had disappeared in case it would ferment out anything my primary yeast didn't (didn't want bottle bombs), then used a 2nd pack at bottling. For the record the gravity didn't change by even a single point with the first addition (don't have my records right here beside me but I believe the FG was around 1.028). So in my one experience I would say that the frequently repeated line of "it'll dry your beer out" isn't accurate at all. It actually was slow to carb the beer as well but it did work...or something did, as there's no way to know for sure it wasn't just simply leftover primary yeast...something like 6 months after the initial pitching.

One thing I'll say for champagne yeast if you want to experiment with using it to push the gravity in a beer...it's cheap. I'd suggest starting with a yeast that gives the character you want, then using the champagne yeast in the latter part of fermentation, for incremental feeding, or for bottling.