MLF with kefir grain?

[kahless79]

Hi,
I'm thinking to make mead and I'm already brewing a small batch of white wine and vitis labrusca wine, both grown in my backyard. I was thinking to do some malolactic fermentation to my white wine as it was really unripe (London is not the best place to grow a souther mediterranean vine variety) and I thought that I might do it also in my mead. I'm finding difficult to find malolactic starters but I was considering if kefir grains are suitable. I would use water kefir really, but I'm not sure if it is the right strain if lactic bacterias

 

[bernardsmith]

Kahless, That is a great question. I don't know the answer but I suspect that despite the fact that kefir grains contain dozens of different kinds of bacteria and yeasts none are likely to be the bacteria that are involved in converting malic to lactic acid. Given the fact that under normal conditions, kefir is a scoby that lives on and in milk (I say that knowing that it is possible to get kefir to live on fruit juice but by all accounts this is not the natural environment for kefir) and given the fact that milk is not a common source of malic acid I wouldn't put any money on the effectiveness of kefir.

That said, 71B appears to be able to metabolize malic acids and can reduce their presence by about 40%. I used to think that this yeast converted that acid to lactic but I have since learned that 71B converts the malic into alcohol... So this may be a possible solution at least to start with...

 

[Maylar]

https://www.brewuk.co.uk/white-labs-wlp675.html

 

[RPh_Guy]

The kefir culture definitely may or may not work

I don't think adding 71B after fermentation will convert malic acid. ??
I thought it eats about 20% of malic acid during fermentation. If it could eat more after fermentation (even if it's 40%) it would probably eat all of it every time.
I may have misunderstood what you're suggesting.

https://www.brewuk.co.uk/white-labs-wlp675.html

Availability: Out of stock

 

[Maylar]

I don't think adding 71B after fermentation will convert malic acid. ??

Right. Only ML Bacteria will do that.

Availability: Out of stock

Oops. I just Googled "Malolactic bacteria in UK" and that's one that came up.

 

[bernardsmith]

My point was to think about using 71B if/when the OP was going to be fermenting his grapes. I understood that he had made a small batch and was asking about what to do with the larger batch or a batch of pyment (?) that he was thinking of making.. I certainly agree that once the sugars have gone 71B will have nothing to work on. It's a yeast and not a bacterium.

 

[kahless79]

Well, thing is I cannot find any suplier of proper starter culture, the kefir thing is because, although it doe snot contain oenococcus oeni, it contains lot of lactobacilla, now the problem is that kefir would break sugars too, as that's what the yeasts in teh bacteria do, and might turn the whole thing in water kefir rather than smoother mead. Thing is I'm pretty sure it would break the malic acid, but it would affect also teh sugars, unless I let first ferment all the sugar and make an extra dry mead. I can use of course precipitated chalk to reduce acidity, but I need to increase body