Yeast results in cider?

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Tchib

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Hi all,
Just saw a few comments on what results different yeasts give when added to plain cider, AKA apple juice, maybe a bit of lemon. Normal sugar levels, no special ingredients.
I have heard Ale yeast give a mellow low carb with little bite and a sweet finish.
Champagne gives a crisp finish with bite and tart taste.
Can anyone confirm this? Can anyone respond with their own findings?
Thanks! :eek:nestar:
 
I've used the champagne yeast and the white labs english cider yeast, going to try ale yeast next. The english cider yeast was drinkable almost right away, the champagne yeast cider had to age a long time to be drinkable.
The english cider yeast left more apple flavor, the champagne yeast had more harsh alcohol character. To be fair, I added sugar to the Champagne yeast batch and din't pay much attention to fermenting temp, it got kind of warm, but my english cider batch was made in the spring, my chilly basement was about 60 degrees. Note that you can get a much higher alcohol level with the champagne yeast.
I'm trying the ale yeast because I want some residual sweetness and flavor.
 
I like the Mangrove Jack's Cider yeast. It produces an off-dry cider with great aromatics in as little as two weeks for a juice-only fermentation.
 
I use Nottingham yeast for my cider. I've tried champagne yeast as well, but I like the flavor of the ale yeast. It definitely leaves more apple taste behind. I'm not a fan of super-dry cider.
 
Champagne yeast is a poor choice for cider, despite numerous recommendations to the contrary. (I suspect all of those are simply echoing each other, or some ur-source; not based on comparative evaluations.) Too aggressive, too harsh, and leaves no apple character.

I like wine yeasts (cider is wine, after all) and my favorites are Lalvin D47 and 1122-71B. QA23 and 58W3 are good too, but require more aging.
 
We also have been playing with the QA23 and like it, also RBS122 seems to do a good job and I think eats a little bit of malic acid. We did a safeale, tasted like beer for the longest time and then after again about a year turned out nice but if we are going to have to age it that long might as well use a wine yeast. WVMJ
 
Made a batch of Freezeblade's dry English cider with S-04. Came out dry (finished at 1.0) and has a nice appley tartness.


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Thanks for all the replies! Glad to hear about ale yeast being the all round favorite. Anyone know about any good perry recipes with ale yeast?
 
My pear cider is 50/50 Heinz pear juice / store bought apple juice and s04 and finishes around 1.008


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