Yeast with a low alcohol tolerance

You're seeking a schizophrenic yeast that may not exist.

Vigorous strains (e.g. Prise de Mousse) tend to ferment everything in sight, whereas slow fermenting strains (e.g. Epernay II) are the ones that are easiest to stop.

Better make up your mind.

Tom S

I like Ray's posting in response to my similar question a while ago. Here is his comment:

"Alcohol tolerance for a yeast is an average, not a tolerance. In general the yeast will quit at about a given point. But there could be (likely to be) yeast in the batch that have a higher tolerance than the average. There could even be some that quit at about the tolerance and then wake up hungry later. There are millions or even billions of yeast in a ferment and some of them will be radicals. Also, yeast are not very bright. They don't always understand how they are supposed to behave. You could even get a whole generation that are lazy and quit early. Use the tolerance as a guide but not as a target. ;o)"

Art Schubert Traverse City, Michigan

It is easier to control the sugar than it is to control the yeast, if there is only enough sugar to reach 10% abv no yeast in the world can ferment it past that point. Ken

I agree with the comments above. Even with a "homogeneous" yeast like those you buy, there are billions or maybe trillions of yeast cells in the bucket and certainly more than that in the must after it goes through a few replications. No mater how hard the yeast company tries, they are not all identical. Like any organism, they mutate and they have personal differences. You cannot guarantee that they will all die off in a certain range. You can control the sugar so they run out of food at a certain alcohol level. Then give them enough time to settle out so you can eliminate most of them through racking. Then you can filter to remove the rest or treat with sorbate to prevent the few left from reproducing and causing a problem and you can sweeten to what ever level you want.

Ray

There is a yeast that does just that. Kitzinger Liebfraumilch ferments up to about 11 %. Normally some sugar remains. Delicious wines, especially used for my applewine. Starts slow, ferments rather quickly until it reaches 10 % and slows down until it finally stops. Where to buy? Rocky Top Homebrew Supplies, Olympia, Washington.

Give it a go.

Ed

"Dick Adams" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...

I always appreciate common sense answers. My problem is that when I let a Maple Syrup Wine/Mead ferment out, it acquires a fuesal taste. So I'd like it to ferment out leaving an SG of around 1.02. The solution so far has been crushed Campden tablets per gallon. They aren't that easy to crush. :)

Dick

I am not talking from experience here but when it gets down to the SG you want you might try putting it in a refrigerator or freezer to stop the fermentation. This will not kill it so if you bring it out and warm it up again it will likely start up again. If you can leave it in the cold until it starts to clear. Then rack it off the sediment. This will leave most of the yeast behind. You might be able to either sterile filter it (not a simple filter, a sterile filter) or treat it with sorbate and let it finish clearing. I would force the clearing with fining as fast as possible.

Just some suggestions. Once again, not from experience so take them for what they are.

Ray

I use the sugar I need to get to the abv I want, ferment dry, bulk age and rack etc. Then bottle dry. When I drink it, I add sugar if needed. Saves a lot of hassle.

Okay I'm betting (but only because I'm in no way certain) that the fuesal taste has to do the yeast you are using and how it ferments the remaining sugars. Likely the remaining sugars are much harder to ferment and thus produce the fuesal taste, a different yeast may result in a different taste. I know someone who fermented out some maple syrup with EC-1118 and had no fuesal tastes. I can understand how annoying the campden tablets would be to crush, have you considered a pill crusher (which should be available from your local drugstore) or buying powdered metabisulphate (though this requires an accurate scale capable of measuring in grams). Ken

I must admit that I do that also and in general it works very well. But I have noted that if I pop the cork, sweeten, then put a tasters cork back in it and let it set for an hour or over night in the fridge, it is better than if I just sweeten when I drink it. Just an observation and my own opinion.

Ray

I'll give that a go. One question, what is a tasters cork?

Use the powder form instead of the tablets. I also don't think we fully understand what your trying to do - leave a residual sweetness without sorbate or what. Sorbate would be the answer but I noticed when I did a Niagara Mist Peach Chardonnay, which was the first time I used sorbate, that I didn't like something in the taste. I'm guessing it was the sorbate.

Don

There are probably other names for them. They are short corks, maybe 1/2 to

3/4 inch with a plastic cap on one end. After you open a bottle you can use them to push back in by hand and open by hand easily without a cork screw. Wine tasting rooms often use them. They are not very good for long term use but for a short period up to maybe a few months they work fine. I buy a few dozen every now and then and use them regularly. They can be reused if you are only using them for a few days at a time.

Ray

They sound like the corks you get on good whisky bottles. I've seen the vacuum pump wine savers, never used one. I keep forgetting to buy one when I'm in town.

Ray Calvert wrote:

Yes they are the same thing as used on a good whisky bottle. I have one of the vacuum pump wine savers and used it a few times, then quit. It pumps out some of the air but leaves the bottle under vacuum and it seems to me that the volatiles come out of solution and that changes the taste of the wine. I would rather keep some splits (375 ml wine bottles) around and I just pour left over wine into the smaller bottle and use the taster cork on it. It will keep that way for several days or a week.

Just the way I do things and maybe just my opinion and prejudice.

Ray

I've always heard them called T-corks, as from the side the plastic cap and the cork look like a capital T. They're also the typcial cap for bottles of port, at least not vintage ports, so I assume that they have some long-term-use possibilities (maybe port bottles have a more narrow opening than typcial wine bottles?). Homebrew store likely has them, and some wine stores might as well.

Rob

Or drink a lot of whisky and port?

Well, sure, but then the initial question was unlikely to be about a yeast that dies at a very low alcohol level, more than likely.

I'll take care of the port, you can have the whisky. :-)

Rob

Well, I just picked up a bottle of cask strength, single malt, Inchgower that's older than I am. That's a good start ;)