Safcider for beer brewing

[chungyfied]

Hi guys,

I have been using Safcider, which seems to be a cider / champagne yeast, to brew my beers and I really enjoy the flavour. It works pretty well and I get around 70% apparent attenuation within 5 - 7 days (20C / 68F) which suggests it has no problem with maltose but does not utilise maltotriose well.

However, I found that by leaving it for 30 days, it attenuates down to around 83%. I have since conducted a forced fermentation (7 days, 28C / 82F) and it has also gotten down to ~83% apparent attenuation. So basically it gets to 70% within 1 week then slowly gets down to 83% after an additional 3 weeks. Does anyone have any experience or insight into whether it just slowly chews more complex sugars or is something else happening here?

Edit: The issue is not with pitch rates either, I have tried pitching at typical cider rates and up to 4x that amount (more than typical ale rates) and the kinetics are still the same

 

[Vale71]

Which yeast did you use? Fermentis has 4 different cider yeasts in its lineup, two of which are ale beer yeasts and the other two are wine yeasts.

 

[chungyfied]

Which yeast did you use? Fermentis has 4 different cider yeasts in its lineup, two of which are ale beer yeasts and the other two are wine yeasts.

The old one which was just called Safcider. If i had to guess it would the current Safcider AB-1

 

[Vale71]

Ok found a picture of the package and it appears to be wine yeast so yes, it might experience difficulties/slowness processing complex sugars but will have a higher alcohol tolerance.

 

[chungyfied]

Ok found a picture of the package and it appears to be wine yeast so yes, it might experience difficulties/slowness processing complex sugars but will have a higher alcohol tolerance.

This part i expected, however what surprised me was the yeast ate up the complex sugar easily during a forced ferment test, I took the Safcider yeast down to 83% attenuation within 7 days for my forced ferment (probably much faster in actual fact but i didnt have time to check FG until 7th day). Is that normal?

 

[Vale71]

Is that normal?

That is the reason why it's called a fast ferment test...
The combination of higher temperature and higher pitch rate and possibly mechanical agitation is responsible for fermentation dynamics that should differ from the actual fermentation, so nothing strange there.