Wine Yeast For Cider

[deanjlandi]

I am wanting some advise on choosing wine yeast to ferment cider. I was looking at WLP720 Sweet Mead/Wine Yeast. Can anyone give me any feed back on it.

Dean J. Landi

 

[Culbetron]

I've found that the wine yeasts I've used tend to strip the apple flavor more than an ale yeast. Either that or the ale yeast is contributing fruity esters more than the wine yeasts.

 

[deanjlandi]

Are there any wine yeast that you've tried that don't strip the apple flavor away completely. Have you tried blending a Ale and wine yeast.

 

[DaMonkey]

are there any wine yeast that you've tried that don't strip the apple flavor away completely. Have you tried blending a ale and wine yeast.

d47

 

[Oberon67]

I'm using D47 for my Apples & Oranges cider. We'll see how it turns out, but so far it's still pretty fruity. In this exercise I'm letting the apple juice provide the fermentables and I'm looking to the orange juice and peel to provide flavor and aroma, so my project is probably a little different from yours.

 

[bernardsmith]

71B is a yeoman of a yeast and has an affinity for malic. Just cracked open a bottle of a cider I made about 9 months ago from Mott's apple juice and it tasted quite delicious. Mind you I tend to ferment paper dry and prefer my cider still

 

[TallDan]

I have some cider on tap now that was made with D47. I liked the WY4766 I used last year better. That said, I like D47 better than the Cider House Select yeast I also used this year. The D47 batch is pretty cloudy though, even with a lot of cold conditioning time.

 

[MindenMan]

I use Red Star Pasteur Red yeast, not the Champagne variety. I have lots of apple flavor at the end of primary, and the yeast isn't temperature finicky.

EDIT: I do keep the fermentation temperature in the low 60's for my ciders. My house is cool enough right now, I don't need to use my fermentation chamber. I currently have 5 different gallons of cider fermenting; 2 just apple, apple, apple-cranberry, cherry-apple, and apple-grape.

The cherry cider is the most unusual cider I have made, using only C-AFJC and water. The sweetness is mostly fermented out, leaving a tart fruity flavor that is quite nice; I don't know how long the wait needs to be before testing. I will try 3 months to start, and work up from there.

 

[Albionwood]

D47 is the best I've found yet for preserving the apple character. Ferment slow and cool to retain aromatics - D47 will work at 50F just fine.

 

[Oberon67]

I'm using D47 for my Apples & Oranges cider. We'll see how it turns out, but so far it's still pretty fruity. In this exercise I'm letting the apple juice provide the fermentables and I'm looking to the orange juice and peel to provide flavor and aroma, so my project is probably a little different from yours.

In other words, it's like comparing... well, you know...

 

[MindenMan]

Touche', Oberon67, I wish I would have said it first.

 

[HawleyFarms]

My 2 best wine yeast fermented ciders (from apples pressed ourselves) was d47 and cote des blanc. Saved a 12 pack of each primed with a honey/stevia combo for carbonation and some residual sweetness from a batch I started in September and cracked 1 of each the other day and the cote des blanc wins so far. It tasted reminiscent of woodchuck amber but I wouldn't call it a clone. D47 was still good. I've tried 71B, 1118, champagne and a couple others for still ciders but they haven't given me enough apple flavor for my liking. Granted they are still young and need more aging time. I want to test them again in six months. I think the varieties of apples in your cider will help you decide what yeast to use as well as how soon you want to drink it.

 

[madscientist451]

I did many test batches (about 20+ combinations) fall 2014 using different single apple varieties and blends using WL 002 ale yeast, WLP 775 english cider yeast and the WLP 720 sweet mead yeast. Everyone I asked to taste the ciders picked the WL 002 fermented ciders as their favorite. These ciders are all somewhat young and could change with some more age, so a second and third round of taste test could bring different results.
The ciders with the English ale yeast didn't ferment dry and retained some apple flavor. I've used wine yeast in the past and didn't care for the flavor. Everyone has different tastes, so I would encourage you to try what you have or what you think would work for you.

 

[bembel]

My 2 best results have been VR21 for residual apple flavor and 71b for what ended up tasting like a clone of Possmann's apfelwein. Both fermented low and slow. 58 degrees racked every month with fresh cider to close headspace

 

[Quaker]

I split 10gallons of Bosc pear juice between D47, Cotes de Blanc, EC1118 Champagne, S04 English, and WLP585 Saison III.

In the end I preferred the D47. The S04 was sulfurous. EC1118 was characterless. No shocker the saison yeast had more yeast character than fruit. Cotes de Blanc was muddled. I used the D47 to split between 1gal jugs for different oak cube comparisons.

In the end, for 2 cases I blended all but the S04. The other 2 cases got everything after an extra day of trying to knock the sulfur out. Sampled my first small 187ml tester bottle last week and it developed well.

For a sweet cider, next fall I want to try Wyeast 4184 based on the mead experiment in the Mar/Apr Zymurgy.

 

[Dhelderman]

How was the batch with saison yeast? I've been contemplating doing a saison apple cider.

 

[Quaker]

I haven't opened my individual sample bottle now that it's aged, but at bottling/blending I recall I wouldn't use it again. I'll make notes when I pop open my single sample bottles of each sometime this summer.

 

[Dhelderman]

I haven't opened my individual sample bottle now that it's aged, but at bottling/blending I recall I wouldn't use it again. I'll make notes when I pop open my single sample bottles of each sometime this summer.

Please let me know how the saison batch turns out. I LOVE a good saison beer and I'm intrigued as to how those funky flavors might translate to cider. Thanks!

 

[Quaker]

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Today I compared my small bottle of perry with Saison yeast to EC1118 champagne yeast. Both are identical clarity. The saison yeast is fairly loosely packed at the bottom compared to the champagne. Each was clear before bottling, and 2.2g of dextrose was put in each bottle to prime (I believe that was targeting 3.5 vols CO2).

I had a hard time differentiating them. My wife had a definite preference for the Saison yeast which she said smelled more apply/perry and had more of a 'cider' taste or bite. The EC1118 was more lemon/line to her in aroma and was basic/nondescript in flavor. I also gave her just one blind and she could always state which was which correctly. As they warmed I could easily pick them apart. There was nothing saison-like coming from it. I had no preference.

Earlier I compared D47 yeast with French Med Toast oak and Hungarian Med+ oak. I still have D47 unadulterated, Cotes de Blancs, and S04 yeast samples to assess. But at this point my plan for future batches is to continue splitting into multiple yeasts (probably switch some up) and blend them all back at bottling. I've had one full size 750ml bottle so far and some small sample bottles of the blend, and it definitely has more complexity than any individual one.