Yeast suggestions?

[Ryue]

Hey y'all,
I haven't been on here or made anything since early 2018, life has been busy lol.
This last weekend my girlfriend and I started 30 gallons of my crowd favorite mead recipe - a Elderberry concoction adapted from a cold remedy Elderberry Syrup my mother made us as kids.

We also started a couple small test batches, one has strawberries, blackberries and pomegranate, the other has blueberries and plums.

While I have had great experience with the Red Star Premiere Blanc yeast, it has an extremely high ABV tolerance, so my recipes either have a high ABV, or I have to let it ferment dry and then back sweeten.
I'm curious if anyone has some suggestions on some other yeast strains for a lower abv, say 10% max?

Thanks in advance!
Cheers!

 

[bernardsmith]

A better approach is not to focus on the maximum ABV tolerance the labs publish for their yeasts but to focus on the ABV that you want. The more fermentable sugars in a batch the higher the potential ABV but there is no law that you MUST always use the highest possible tolerance for alcohol that the yeast possess because that's what they possess. If you want a mead at 5% ABV you can still use a yeast that won't collapse at 18% ABV. Just use less honey/ gallon of must. Finish brut dry, stabilize and back sweeten if you want a sweeter mead or finish brut dry and bottle if you prefer a bone dry mead. You are in the driver's seat - not the yeast. To use the alcohol tolerance as the basis for making a mead is very similar to determine where you drive based on the size of the gas tank in your car. Not every trip needs to be 250 or 300 miles. You CAN drive 3 miles down the road if that's where you want to go.