Yeast choice for semi sweet cyser

[dizzyfun]

After brewing beers for 9 months a friend has asked me to make him a traditional "old world" mead for him. I found an interesting read... The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened
There are plenty of old mead recipes but most sound pretty gross, including a lot of spices that would not compliment a mead.
My friend would like a semi sweet mead. I would like to start on this today. It will be a cyser mead.
The yeasts I have on hand are....Nottingham, Red star montrachet, US-05 and Red Star Premier Cuvee.
Of these, what would you use for the above mead style and why? Thanks!

 

[devianttouch]

I have done a cyser with Montrachet before with good results. I like Montrachet because it compacts well and the flavors work well for cyser (though I find them incredibly mild). Premier Cuvee is more neutral - If you don't want added complexity it's a good choice. However, the Premier Cuvee has a higher alcohol tolerance (18%), so if you are going for semi-sweet you'd probably have to backsweeten that. I haven't tried any ale yeasts in mead yet, so I have no idea how that will turn out.

 

[Wraithraider]

I've made two cysers, one traditional and one with cherries, and both used Nottingham. It fermented clean and left the flavors of the honey, apples, and cherries in the final product. Both finished in the primary after three weeks while doing staggered nutrient additions at 65 degrees. Compared to the other yeasts you have it will also be more drinkable sooner, but certainly gets better with age. The difference between 3 and 6 months in the bottle was pretty staggering. Also as an ale yeast, it will have a lower attenuation and you can achieve a sweeter final product easily.

 

[fatbloke]

You're not making beers, you're making meads now, so you don't need to worry about **** like trying to make a mead like a beer.

Most wine yeasts will easily ferment to 14%, many will go higher. If your friend wants a semi/medium sweet, by far the easiest technique is to work the recipe so that it is likely to ferment dry, then rack and stabilise, followed by back sweetening to the desired level of sweetness.

I read too many threads where people try to use a more beer like technique but with the usual wine making yeasts etc and make the musts to stupidly high gravities, then wonder why they have fermentation management problems.

There's no reason why you can't produce a good brew with either of the two redstar yeasts.......I'm thinking that the Montrachet as the PC will likely ferment dry and if you didn't like the idea of stabilising chems, it's gonna be easier to get the Montrachet to it's tolerance and then any honey added to back sweeten won't re-start any fermentation etc. The PC is likely to have a higher tolerance so the possible issues as mentioned above, plus to get it passed it's tolerance is gonna need more planning/management, and the higher alcohol level would likely mean it needed ageing much longer to come good, even with back sweetening.

Oh, and don't forget that cysers can take a while to come good so that you get some of the apple flavour/characteristics to come through. So maybe think on making it "as is", getting it to the appropriate sweetness level, then ageing it for a while with some sharp/tart, strongly flavoured apple in the batch. An appropriate level of sulphites will prevent any possible MLF occuring, unless you actually wanted that.