Favorite yeast strains?

[Alan]

Ye Olde wine makers out there, what are your favorite yeast strains for different types of wine and why?

[canadamike]

Sorry, not my cup of tea. But on the other hand, I know of a few strains half the population don't like much ;D

Does it help

[landarc]

Alan, I do not make wine, however, I do consume my fair share. This has given me a lot of access to winemakers. Okay, maybe more than my fair share of consumption. Anyways, a lot of them prefer the strains of Montrachet yeast as they feel it gives the best overall performance and tends to produce few if any off flavors. The Red Star dry Montrachet yeast is one that was particularly recommended to me. Also the EC1118 which is a champagne yeast was recommended as a very forgiving yeast, especially for higher alcohol tolerance ferments. I am told by my Napa Valley contacts that these are substitutes at the consumer level, as they have access to yeasts that the normal person cannot acquire.

[canadamike]

Landars, if a person could put his hands on a commercial sourde, would there be an eficient way to reproduce it, like bread yeast?

[Alan]

That Michael is the next part of my question. How can one propagate and maintain their own yeast strains?

Thanks for the info. landarc.

[grunt]

I don't know if it will work for wine yeasts, but sourdough starter (yeast) is saved by making a batch of sourdough, adding cornstarch as a thickener to make a stiff paste, and spreading it out to 1/4" thickness. Score in squares and ry. It can then be stored someplace cool and dry (or frozen).
Since yeast is yeast, it should work for wine yeast as well. Or take the sludge from the bottom of your first batch, and try the same sort of thing. Simply putting it in the freezer should do the trick as well.

[Jim]

it will work for wine yeasts. The yeast in wine stops producing at a certain alchohol content. If you took a sample of the wine out you could innoculate your next batch. However if I remember correctly the yeast was about the cheapest part of winemaking.

[landarc]

Yeast can be harvested and maintained, or in the case of many wineries and breweries, developed and nourished. The problem with wine is that it is often filtered and fined in a manner that makes yeast harvesting difficult. Many high end beer brewers sell live beer, or unfined beers, that maintain the yeast they use. You can make a strain for yourself by starting with a commercial yeast, such as the Red Star, and just keep harvesting the yeast cake. If you refrigerate it, it will stay viable for several weeks, with no more effort than refrigeration. It will also respond to feeding.

Many of the wineries that I know maintain special yeast blends, or maintain a certain strain, for their use. It adds to the character of their wines. Most large commercial wineries use labs for this purpose. I have three jars of what was once White Labs WLP001 American Ale yeast in the fridge. I keep using it as I like the product I have been getting. As long as I brew every month or so, it will keep going.

[Emerald]

Jan 11, 2009 18:55:01 GMT -5 Alan said:

That Michael is the next part of my question. How can one propagate and maintain their own yeast strains?

Thanks for the info. landarc.

Now I haven't tried this yet but being a baker and propagating the yeast so that I can get more loaves from it so that I am not always buying more, I was wondering the same thing about wine yeast- on the home brewing boards that I have been lurking in, they have many different threads on how to grow and maintain their beer and wine yeasts- this link has a great step by step and pictures to show how to prop some extra yeast.

www.unm.edu/~draper/beer/slantuse.html

Now wine yeasts are quite cheap near me but it is still a 40 minute drive to get there and I tend to be quite frugal with my spare cash, so I might try this to keep my favorite yeast going for a few years or so. I have only tried one kind so far and have another one in the fridge for the next batch of wine so I might be jumping the gun so far but I believe that you can never plan too far ahead!

Now there is another way to get yeasts too- called Washing the Yeast- they take the yeast cake from the bottom of the beer/wine and wash the extra lees off - that sounds more time consuming, but doable.. They also talk about re-pitching juices on top of the left over yeast cakes but not to do that more than a few times as if you are not totally clean/sterile then it could get a bacterial infection and ruin a whole batch.
Hope that helps a bit, it should give you something to search and read about.

[Alan]

Thanks for the info emerald, and right in time as I will be preparing to begin brewing in the first couple weeks of October, when I will also enjoy the first of the one year old Mead!


This years list includes:
mead
raspberry
mullberry
blueberry
alpine strawberry
blackberry
paw paw
and some "blends"

Also got me some champagne yeasts and bottles and am gonna take a stab at that.

I really wish I had the money to buy the equipment for brewing beer or wish I could at least find a brew club.

[Emerald]

Alan for starting to find stuff for brewing beer- look at your local bakery- I have been buying food grade plastic buckets with good lids for $1 at my local grocery stores bakery- we use them for stuff out in the yard, car washing, and while I would like to get away from using any plastics, storing my flours (I buy in bulk, getting about 25lbs of flour at a time of each type) The lids usually have a good rubber seal and can be pounded back on with a small rubber mallet.
These buckets are the same buckets that they soak ya about $10 at the brew store for. The only thing is, some of them are 3 1/2 gallon and some are 5 gallon and you have to be right there to get those 5 gallon ones. The little spouts/spickets on the buckets can be bought online very cheaply (my local brew store has them in stock)and are easy to put on, or you can just siphon it like you do wine. Many of the brewers on Homebrewtalk.com have gotten their buckets at the bakery.
Glass carboys are another story- I have seen that my local culligan store looks like they have some glass ones in the front window, so I will be stopping there when they are open to see how much they are. Some folks have found that water carboys that you can buy in the store but are made of plastic can be used if you find one with the #2 in the triangle, that is the same stuff as the food grade buckets and will stand up to wine/beer use. I am very leery of all plastics so would probably only do that if I can't find another glass carboy. One good note on the plastic carboys- the BPA scare has made some of the water bottle folks start making them BPA free, and I know that there is a company that makes a big carboy called Better Bottles that are 1/2 the price of the glass and are made for brewing.
Oh, by the way, I have used the LV-1118 for apple wine and really liked it, and have the Cote de blanc in some mead now, so I'll have to tell ya next year if I like it or not! lol

And Alan- that home brew talk site has lists of brew clubs from Canada to most of the USA, you might be able to find one close to you that they didn't know about. You can get a Jr. membership for free, but if you want to put up pictures and stuff that membership is about $25 US. Just a heads up.

[paquebot]

Oct 20, 2009 8:22:34 GMT -5 Emerald said:

Oh, by the way, I have used the LV-1118 for apple wine and really liked it, and have the Cote de blanc in some mead now, so I'll have to tell ya next year if I like it or not! lol

This is my first year of using Red Star's Côte des Blancs yeast. It's a nice gentle one which doesn't produce a lot of foam but gets the job done. It's been working on 20+ gallons of Seckel pear juice and 35+ gallons of mixed apple juice. Ten 5-gallons glass carboys bubbling away and last 7 gallons or so in one of the crocks. 55+ gallons for 89¢ worth of yeast. I found that it works much like Epernay which used to be my favorite for apple. Next will be 7½ gallons of wild grape but using a German Kitzinger Burgundy yeast on that.

Martin

[MikeM]

Jan 11, 2009 18:55:01 GMT -5 Alan said:

That Michael is the next part of my question. How can one propagate and maintain their own yeast strains?

I can't speak for Wine yeasts specifically, but have a fair bit of experience with sourdough and beer yeasts, and the one thing I have learned in about 3 years of maintaining yeasts is that - on the whole - it's pretty easy. Yeast is pretty robust stuff, and, as long as you take reasonable precautions around sanitising and hygiene, you're likely to be OK. Just keep multiple clones of each yeast strain so that if one container does go wrong you have lots of backups.

From my beers I just harvest the yeast cake after primary fermentation. (You don't want the yeast that's left over from secondary fermentation -- too weak and too likely to have acquired an undesirable mutation.) Then I wash the yeast. Just add the yeast to a quantity of boiled water cooled to the appropriate temp. for propagating that yeast strain in a sanitised/sterilised jar. Propagation temps are quite a lot different to optimum fermentation temps. so you need to find out what temp range is best for the yeast you have. For Ale/top-fermenting yeasts the best propagation temps are in the 25C-40C range. After a while the yeast settles out into layers: trub at the bottom, then yeast, then a light layer of dirty water, beer, light gunk. Pour off the topmost layer, save the yeasty layers and throw the rest away. If it doesn't look too clean you can repeat the procedure. If you're really worried you can wash using an acid solution at pH as low as about 2.5-3 (usually food-grade phosphoric acid.)

Washed yeast should keep at least 3 or 4 months in the refrigerator in a sanitised sealed container, or you can mix equal parts of water, yeast and glycerine (not glycol!) and freeze it -- should keep for a year or more.

Slant culturing is used to keep yeast genetically pure and clean, and is a whole Other Story in terms of sterilisation and contamination possibilities. I'm still learning this part of things.

Soon to start on the next part of my adventure: Breeding my own yeast strains! ;D