Alternate yeasts in wine making...

[Chuck E]

Has anyone used yeasts intended for beer brewing in their wine? I see many ads for beer yeast that purport to add "citrus notes" and other flavors. It would seem that maybe those yeasts would be good to use on a Sauvignon Blanc or Riesling.

I have used White Lab's double strain yeast, Torulaspora Delbruekii, and it turned out well on batch of Zinfandel.
Chuck

 

[Cynewulf]

I don’t have the experience to be able to answer your question, but I understand you may need to pay attention to ethanol tolerance since some beer yeasts will die out once a certain abv is achieved, as well as the kind of sugars the yeast will consume most efficiently (fructose, sucrose, maltose, etc).

I’m interested in your experience using White Labs torulaspora delbruekii as I’ve been eyeing it since finding wine yeasts with it is difficult and they can be expensive. I assume you had to inoculate with saccharomyces after a certain point?

 

[Chuck E]

I used White Lab's WP611. It has 2 saccharomyces strains with the Torulaspora Delbruekii in one culture. It fermented well, without too much froth. I enjoy trying new yeasts. I want to try Avante next.

 

[Eric Huser]

Most beer yeast can't take alcohol over 12% very well. I use beer yeast until they are done, then pitch a finisher yeast. We like dry wines. For sweet wines you should be great. I even use wild yeast for both wines and beer. Very interesting flavors, but then again they can't take much alcohol.

 

[BernardSmith]

For certain meads, ale yeasts work particularly well, and while the ale yeast may not be guaranteed to produce a product above 10 or 11% ABV, many meads and wines are not made to exceed 12 -14% ABV and ale yeasts can be encouraged to make a good barley wine which will be at or beyond that range. I suspect that much of the talk about the limits of beer yeast has the same basis as the talk about bread yeast. The thing is that beer and bread yeasts' tolerance for alcohol is not as low as folk imagine. The problem with the latter us that it is not cultured to flocculate and so removing the yeast from your wine is not easy and the presence of those cells adds flavor notes that remind people of bread.

 

[mainshipfred]

I once asked a commercial winemaker about using a cider yeast in order to allow some residual sugar to remain for a sweeter wine which I thought was a good idea. His response was all yeasts have what he called their Olympians which will take it to dry along with the airborne yeast in the winery. Not sure I totally believe it but I'm too chicken to try.