Yeast carbonation in hard sodas.

[jonnybleu]

Hello everyone,
I bottle some sodas and we are now looking at doing some hard sodas. We prefer yeast for its flavor properties (and ease of carbonation) on some sodas which of course produces some alcohol, but very minimal. In a forced CO2 carbonation setup I can easily add vodka to the mix and carbonate. But would this work in a yeast carbonated setup? In a 500ml bottle it would take 62.5ml of 40% vodka to make a 5% soda. Will 5% alcohol level kill off yeast? We currently use Red Star Pasteur Champagne yeast for in bottle carbonation.

Thanks for any insight.

 

[clone63]

Will 5% alcohol level kill off yeast?

No.

Unless you kill the yeast through pasteurization, or chemically stabilize, or cold crash, or... irradiate the product, yeast will consume fermentable sugars until about 18%ABV with a champagne yeast. Obviously that would be quite explosive if you don't have a properly measured amount of added fermentables.

Buuuut since you've already used yeast to carbonate things it sounds like you may have a way of stopping fermentation where you desire at certain volumes of pressure. Or you sweeten with things not fermentable..

 

[jonnybleu]

Will have to try some experiments. Just didn't have the stuff here so figured I'd ask.

Yea, yeast can be very explosive, I just tend to control the temp carefully during fermentation stage and then store chilled to stop any additional fermentation. I've got it timed to create a nice fizzy soda (or ginger ale or sparkly apple juice) without being so fizzy it overflows (or explodes bottles although that did happen once).

Thanks