Bluelinebrewer
Well-Known Member
Hopefully someone will be able to offer me some advice here. I'm making a grape ale and I'm wanting to use champagne yeast. Will 2 (5g) packets of dry champagne yeast be enough for a 1.054 beer?
Look at the yeast cell count on the packet and then plug it in to yeast per liter per plato formula or Mr Malty and you will have your answer. I have bee toying with the thought of using some wine yeasts in ales for a while now. You should be fine with only one packet as most wines/champagne are in the 10-13% range and you are talking half that.
Wine yeast is generally not adapted to eating the complex malt sugars (i.e. beer sugars). While there are some simple sugars created in the mashing process (and extract too, I presume) and you will be providing some simple sugars from the grape juice, the yeast will likely stop eating once the simple sugars have been consumed leaving you with most of the original wort/extract sugars remaining. This is likely not the result you're hoping for.
I think this might be a case where two yeast would work best. Start with the wine yeast and allow them to ferment for 1 day and then add a rehydrated dry brewers yeast to finish up the malt sugars. At least that's my opinion.
Unfortunately, I don't think this is a practical solution. Most wine yeasts are 'killer' yeasts; that is, they prevent regular brewers yeasts from reproducing, so you would really need to pitch high to get the job done.
Since we are on the subject, I have a question. Does using champagne yeast do anything different to a batch of regular beer?
Yes. It makes it taste like not very good beer.
Yes. It makes it taste like not very good beer.
Ahhh, c'mon Denny! Have you ever done this? (I'm absolutely not trying to sound like an ass, just curious if you have.) Boulevard makes a Grape Nelson Ale, its a tasting room beer. Its an amazing beer! The recipe that I'm using is straight from one of the brewers there, and he says all they use is champagne yeast. It smells God awfully sulfury right now, but I did take a sample, and its well on its way to tasting great!
I wonder if the fruit juice makes the difference? I'm spitballing, but I'm guessing just barley wort would leave a very different flavor profile.
Ahhh, c'mon Denny! Have you ever done this? (I'm absolutely not trying to sound like an ass, just curious if you have.) Boulevard makes a Grape Nelson Ale, its a tasting room beer. Its an amazing beer! The recipe that I'm using is straight from one of the brewers there, and he says all they use is champagne yeast. It smells God awfully sulfury right now, but I did take a sample, and its well on its way to tasting great!
I'm hoping so! Like I said, the recipe came straight from the brewery, so, it should be pretty close!
Couple things I've noticed so far. 1. Champagne yeast, at least the one I'm using, is very sulfury when fermenting. 2. There is very little krausen produced.
I started out at 1.042, approx 36 hrs later it was down to 1.024. Per the recipe, I temped up to 23℃, from 20℃. Not sure why the increase in temp, but, I went with it.
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