Foxfire Recipe - (dandelion wine)

[Fletch78]

The Foxfire books, some of you are familiar with them. It's almost dandelion season down in Georgia, and I am going to make some dandelion wine for the first time and I want to use the recipe from the Foxfire book vol II, very old-timey.

It calls for "yeast cake" and I'm not sure what this means. In 1966 Appalachian terms, what is a "yeast cake"?

I was just going to pitch with Fleishmann's to keep it kitchy and quaint, but did some calculations and if fermented fully, it would be 20% or more alcohol. Obviously, it would finish very sweet, especially with a basic yeast. It would also probably taste very funky from the yeast being stressed before finally dying, if it even fermented at all.

If by "yeast cake" they mean a large amount of sediment from a previous batch of wine, is it possible that the huge amount of yeast would be able to eat up enough sugar, quickly enough, to bring the gravity down to a moderate level for the majority of the fermentation time, with a minimal of "off" flavors and sulfur compounds, given the graduated alcohol content through that process?

Given a typical lag phase and growth phase, with plenty aeration for the first couple of days, can the gross amount of yeast introduced actually have a profound enough effect to overcome what seems to be a Dead End for a typical brew/wine?

I know, there's a lot of questions embedded within questions here, but any insight to educate me on yeast in general will help me very much. Hopefully some of you gurus can enlighten me.

Also, FWIW, I will be using water from a secret hidden mountain spring from the mountainside of the same microrange as the dandelions are picked from..

 

[Dr_Gordon_Freeman]

Just use wine yeast... there's nothing to be gained by using bread yeast other than off flavors.

If it was all I had available, I'd use it but for your purposes I don't see the point. It will ferment to wine alc levels btw.

 

[Fletch78]

Thank you Dr. Freeman. Can you write me a referral? I'd like a second opinion. No offense, I just want to be sure. These are dandelions we are talking about here.

 

[passedpawn]

Baker's yeast used to be available in the form of a brick, or cake. Hence, yeast cake, and yes they undoubtedly are referring to bread yeast.

My family had the whole set of foxfire books. Very useful information for the post-apocalyptic world.

 

[Fletch78]

Baker's yeast used to be available in the form of a brick, or cake. Hence, yeast cake, and yes they undoubtedly are referring to bread yeast.

My family had the whole set of foxfire books. Very useful information for the post-apocalyptic world.

I have volume I and II. I can now make my own soap, build a log cabin, gather wild edibles year round, make several types of wine, plant seeds by the signs, and distinguish between "imagination" and a real "haint" lol

And that's just the first two books. I want the whole set.

 

[david_42]

No reference, but as I was 14 in '66, I can testify on personal experience that people bought bread yeast in cakes of 2 oz. You whacked a chunk off and proofed it.

I'll ditto wine yeast.

 

[RIBeer]

I am lucky enough to have the whole set - I love reading through it, and it will be handy for the Zombie Apocolypse. I'd also stick to a wine yeast - why go through the effort of harvesting the flowers and making the wine to try and ferment with bread yeast?

 

[Fletch78]

My only experience with bread yeast is with Joe's Ancient Orange Mead, and the off flavors aren't related to the yeast, but the clove, on my palette, and the fusels which I trump up to the fact I kept it in the warmest room in the house for 2 months, easily 75 degrees on average. It fermented down pretty low, 1.010 which is unusually low for that recipe according to the people on GotMead. I have faith in the bread yeast. The point of doing this is to follow the Foxfire recipe, and they used yeast cake. Also, a stupid amount of sugar. I can only assume this amount of sugar is used to cover up the bitterness of the flower husks, since they use the whole flower. I'll retrieve the recipe... stand by...


Edit upon retrieval.:

Dandelion wine: pour one gallon boiling water over one gallon dandelion flowers. Let stand until blossoms rise (twenty-four to forty-eight hours). Strain into stone jar. Add juices of four oranges and four lemons, and four pounds of sugar, plus one yeast cake. Stir four or five times a day until it stops fermenting. Keep well covered. In two weeks, strain, bottle and cork tightly.

It seems like it should ferment out to about 12% and be very sweet.

However, I'm a beginner... any input here is appreciated. I've read several other dandelion wine topics here, and the basic principle seems to be getting just the petals, due to bitterness of the other parts. And, like yall have already stated, using wine yeast.

I've got nothing against using Go-ferm, fermaid K, DAP. I have all on site I purchased for other projects.