Crazy Idea (or maybe not)

[MikeRLynch]

Alright guys,

I'm bottling up my blueberry wine from August, but seeing as how it cleared so nice, (and I don't have extra fermentor space) I'm bottling from the primary. I waited until the fruit dropped, 2 months, and I poured off a quick sample. It's nice and clear, tastes good but could age a little longer (I didn't make this one very big, maybe 9 to 10%.). My question is this:

Could I use the yeast (and to some extent the blueberry trub) for a batch of mead? I wouldn't have any money for honey until at least tues, so I was thinking of getting it started by boiling up some table sugar and pitching that on the lees to get em going. Once that "starter" is going in the fermentor, I'll pick up some honey and toss 'er in there.

The facts:

3 gal fermentor
Lalvin 71b yeast
2 months primary
A LOT of trub, may pour some off before pitching more sugar.

Feasible? Stupid? Worth a try? Not sure if any notes from the blueberry will come through, but I figured this would be a way to get a nice healthy yeast count on a newly pitched batch of mead. Lemme know what you think.

 

[Smogre]

I really don't see why this would be an issue. I've made 4 generations of a metheglin off 1 cake and they're all fantastic!

I don't know how much of the berry will come through but the color would be killer!

 

[hightest]

Although there are those who do reuse dry wine yeast, I personally do not recommend the practice for mead & wine. Yet, I do reuse yeast when I brew beer (I use liquid yeast for beer).

Why? The primary reason is that the ABV levels experienced by wine yeast are much greater than in most beer worts. This results in stressing the yeast to a greater extent, and increasing the probability of creating future generation mutations.

Secondly, the cost of wine yeast is much less than liquid beer yeast.

I've seen this question a few time over the past 5 years, and it was discussed during one online chat with Dr. Clayton Cone. I can't find my chat transcript right now, but I recall Dr. Cone was not in favor of the practice. Of course, he provided a more scientific basis for his position. At the end of the chat, I believe he use the term, "it boils down to a crap shoot".

With today's honey prices, I think I'll eliminate the "crap shoot" and use fresh yeast for each new batch - just my 2¢...

 

[MikeRLynch]

Hmm, interesting. I think the one thing that convinced me was the honey price argument. Logic doesn't always sway me, but money does.

I think I can be more at ease putting a bunch of apple juice or cider in here and seeing what happens. It's harvest season for apples anyway, I can probably get fresh pressed local stuff. Good looks, I might have wasted a lot of money!

Only problem is, if this next batch of "apple stuff" is any good, I'll have a hell of a time reproducing the events that lead up to it. Oh well, it can be my seasonal ritual: pick 13 lbs of blueberries, ferment them out, bottle in the fall, and then fill up with fresh apple cider. Sounds like a very natural progression