Beer yeast?

[Steveruch]

Can beer yeast be used to ferment mead?

 

[shetc]

Yes

 

[Dan O]

Can beer yeast be used to ferment mead?

Absolutely. I use BOMM yeast (Wyeast 1388 Belgian Strong Ale yeast) for almost all of my meads. Bray's One Month Mead (BOMM) uses it.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/brays-one-month-mead.429241/

 

[bracconiere]

wait, people talk smack when i was using wine yeast for beer?

my thought using wine yeast for beer, it was 'cleaner' and not as yeasty...so maybe using beer yeast for mead won't be as crisp?

 

[Dan O]

I can only speak from the experience that I have had with this particular yeast.....the only beer yeast I have used in a mead. All I know is, it works. Clean flavors, ferments fast, 16% every time, yeast compacts pretty quick, pretty big temperature range. I've had good success using it, although I see a lot of mixed feelings about it on many different forums. Not sure why though.

 

[McMullan]

It's all ale yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Even the stuff winos use. In some situations 'strain' doesn't matter as much as it can fermenting barley worts. Even lager yeast, Saccharomyces pastorianus, make a nice 'mead', carbonated and served cool.

 

[bracconiere]

It's all ale yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Even the stuff winos use.

i thought wine yeast was S. bayanus?

 

[amber-ale]

But usually wine recipes are designed to use wine yeast and ale recipes designed for ale yeast.
Type of yeast can affect end flavour, dryness, alcohol content, etc
But wine yeast recipes have different amounts of fermentables because many wine yeast can ferment more sugar/fermentables than ale yeasts can and produce more alcohol.
As long as you adjust your recipe, you can use anything you want for whatever end result you want

 

[McMullan]

i thought wine yeast was S. bayanus?

Another interesting mongrel strain, but S. cerevisiae is more commonly used to ferment wine, even when people think they're pitching S. bayanus

 

[MightyMosin]

SafAle S-04 and US-05 arr two nice ones to use. S-04 produces more esters.

With proper nutrients and aeration they can hit 14%... Pretty good for a 9 to 11% rated yeast.