Wine Yeasts for beer making

[lurker18]

I just listened to an older episode of the Sunday Session,11-23-08, the guest was Shea Comfort and they were talking about using wine yeasts to brew beer, either full brews or blends with normal beer yeast. I was interested in the different characters that the strains gave. Unfortunatly I was on a plane and didn't follow too close to the conversation. Does anyone have a chart that describes the wine yeasts, the characters, and if they can do a full brew or need blending.

 

[devilishprune]

I took notes on that episode because I wanted to try it in the future. Hope this helps:


71b-lots of fruitiness, can pitch with beer yeast. No other yeasts can be.
1118-Neutral, with winey character. Grapey, general fermented fruit and estery.
K1V-1116-Stone fruit/peach quality. Use in wheats? For apricot/peach character
GRE-Red wine, fresh berry impact. Scottish ale with this, stout, porter?
BM-45-Cherry, strong effect on mouthfeel without long chain sugars.
Wine mouthfeel is from autolysis products.
L2226-Berrylike

OAK
-Sweetness and roundness of American oak round out roasted grains compared to Hungarian and French oaks.
-Timing of addition changes impact of oak. Low level of oak cubes in the ferment makes a nice finish (1 oz / 5 gallons) usually 1-2 weeks. 4oz of water + cubes in microwave up to boil 2 times. Add entire thing to fermenter. Steaming them speeds the process up.
- Adding oak in secondary doesn’t allow them to get as integrated.
-During fermentation, yeast metabolize vanilla.
-Oak adds longevity to beer.
-Get slightly more than you want, then remove it.
Heavy toast American for stouts and porters.

Blending cubes-
American- sweet, perfumey but not much structure
French-complex, but not minerality
Hungarian-structure

 

[permo]

"Adding oak in secondary doesn’t allow them to get as integrated"

My bourbon oaked imperial stout is evidence against this theory......... did they state the reasoning behind adding the wood to the fermenter?

Also, I think many folks believe that many of the trappist strains are mutated vitners yeast, so wine yeast is a cool avenue to explore.

 

[devilishprune]

I agree with you here, but I wrote it down anyway. It's been a while since I've listened to it, but I think it had something to do with yeast consuming some of the compounds in the oak during the active part of fermentation.

 

[lurker18]

thanks for the reply, that is exactly what I was looking for.

 

[Teacher]

I'd read that wine yeasts don't metabolize maltose well. Is this another myth?

 

[devilishprune]

Yes, it is. I tried a beer made by a guy that used wine yeast. Tasted like a beer.

What you're probably thinking of is maltoTRIose, which is a molecule consisting of three linked glucose units. Both wine yeast and ale yeasts are unable to ferment this compound (they are, after all, both Saccharomyces cerevisiae).

 

[6470zzy]

http://www.danstaryeast.com/library/wine-yeasts

I found this interesting link on the subject of maltotriose.

Cheers