Wine yeast

[BHebert]

Can wine yeast be washed and saved like beer yeast? Can a yeast starter be made for wine yeast?

 

[jensmith]

Can wine yeast be washed and saved like beer yeast? Can a yeast starter be made for wine yeast?

A yeast starter can be made with wine yeast.

Wine yeast can be "saved". I have not washed any. Just saved the yeasty sludge for later use as is.


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[Yooper]

One of the issues with saving yeast is that you want only healthy yeast. Often, a wine is 11% ABV or more- and in those cases, the yeast is stressed and should not be reused. I wouldn't use anything that came out of 7%+. and often I wouldn't reuse it at all.

Wine yeast is under $1 a package, and so I would not risk saving the lees of a batch to save $1, unless the former batch was very low ABV and there was not much 'stuff', like pectin, in the lees to ruin the next batch.

 

[withoutink]

Not to steal this thread. What advantage does one get from brewing with wine yeast? My wife works at a winery and I can stock up super cheap if it's worth using for anything.

Sorry, I'm still a super newbie.

 

[Yooper]

Not to steal this thread. What advantage does one get from brewing with wine yeast? My wife works at a winery and I can stock up super cheap if it's worth using for anything.

Sorry, I'm still a super newbie.

None. Most wine yeast don't metabolize maltose very well.

You can use a higher attenuating wine yeast in certain beers when there are a lot of simple sugars (sucrose, fructose) after the brewer's yeast is finished with the maltose/maltriose but that's a rare case.

 

[pumpkinman2012]

One other factor to consider, not all yeast play well together, some have a very high competitive factor, if you mix two yeasts that are highly competitive, they can end up killing each other off in an attempt to become the dominant yeast and you will end up with a stuck fermentation, you can find this info on the manufacturers website (at least for wine yeasts).

 

[withoutink]

One other factor to consider, not all yeast play well together, some have a very high competitive factor, if you mix two yeasts that are highly competitive, they can end up killing each other off in an attempt to become the dominant yeast and you will end up with a stuck fermentation, you can find this info on the manufacturers website (at least for wine yeasts).

Awesome, thanks for the education.

 

[bernardsmith]

Can wine yeast be washed and saved like beer yeast? Can a yeast starter be made for wine yeast?

Not sure why you need to make a starter with wine yeast. Most (all?) wine yeasts come in dry form. Dry yeasts already contain the appropriate size colony of active yeast for up to 5 or 6 gallons of must if you rehydrate or pitch according to the instructions on the package (about 3 or 4 million cells / ml). Beer yeast in liquid form have only , relatively speaking, a tiny colony of yeast so you may need to create a starter to have enough yeast to work on the batch of wort you've provided without stressing the yeast

 

[BHebert]

I started a three gallon batch and two one gallon batches on the same day. I was wondering if I could make a starter to use in all three batches. Wine yeast is cheap enough, guess I'll just buy more when I make that much wine in one day.