Does yeast nutrients increase the taste and quality of wine?

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PJ805

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I started a few batches of wine in 2018 with fresh high quality grapes and they came out great, much better than your average $5 bottle of wine. I did not use any yeast nutrients though. Do yeast nutrients improve the taste and quality of wine? Would it be worth adding to my next batch?
 
I started a few batches of wine in 2018 with fresh high quality grapes and they came out great, much better than your average $5 bottle of wine. I did not use any yeast nutrients though. Do yeast nutrients improve the taste and quality of wine? Would it be worth adding to my next batch?

I don’t believe that the issue is so much about enhancement, though well fed yeast will produce tastier wine than hungry, stressed yeast. Using nutrients is also about flaw prevention and providing an environment for your yeast to do their job as well as they are capable of. Lack of yeast nutrition can cause H2S problems which will be converted to mercaptans in the wine if not treated. Lack of nutrients may also cause your wine to stop fermenting altogether. A proper nutrient protocol is an important part of winemaking, IMHO.
 
DAP is used as a preventative as Johnd noted. Well grown grapes have a good nitrogen level and will readily ferment, at cellar temperatures, , however with hot temperature we may cause the metabolism to speed up and nutrients to be limiting. . . ie maybe DAP will improve the fermentation, , and usually excess YAN won’t hurt things. Only a little “dirt”/mineral is needed for growth.

if you are going into fruit wines some of them are nutrient deserts or some recipes dilute 1fruit to 5 water or a second wine from grape, in which case adding fermax and DAP are necessary.
 
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If you have really great grapes you don’t need nutrients... but I think on the hobbyist scale that’s rare, sadly!
 

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