Yeast
- Thread starter dan18can
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bernardsmith
Well-Known Member
You can use cider yeast, ale yeast, lager yeast and wine yeast to make mead. Most yeast you can buy at your LHBS belongs to the same species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. They are simply different strains of that species, strains selected and developed by brewers and wine makers over millennia. Each strain has different preferences regarding the sugars they can ferment, their tolerance for alcohol, the character/s they add to or remove from the wine or mead and the temperature at which they prefer to ferment. so, for example, different yeasts produce different interesting floral or fruity flavors while others are considered "clean" - and don't. Some yeasts add to the mouthfeel (viscosity), others don't. Presumably "cider yeasts" highlight apple notes as they ferment sugars and they may be more comfortable in musts where the dominant acid is malic.
And if you are comfortable with the idea AND your honey is raw (unheated at processing, and unheated by you) you can even use the indigenous yeast that will be roused when you dilute the honey with unchlorinated water. True, you might want to coddle those yeast and slowly, slowly increase the amount of sugar they are asked to ferment (I'd start with a gravity of about 1.020 and if and when they bring that down to 1.000, I'd add enough more honey to bring this back up to 1.020 again, and repeat this until the wild yeast have either quit or they have hit the ABV you were looking for.
And if you are comfortable with the idea AND your honey is raw (unheated at processing, and unheated by you) you can even use the indigenous yeast that will be roused when you dilute the honey with unchlorinated water. True, you might want to coddle those yeast and slowly, slowly increase the amount of sugar they are asked to ferment (I'd start with a gravity of about 1.020 and if and when they bring that down to 1.000, I'd add enough more honey to bring this back up to 1.020 again, and repeat this until the wild yeast have either quit or they have hit the ABV you were looking for.
