Yeast SAFSPIRIT M1

richard

Sounds like everyone is now days in the "bunch of old farts" categories. 8-}

DonMateo

Hey. I resemble that remark.

GD50

Mr Fiji is now at Suva I believe and apart from Mosquito Island and hotel pools there isn’t any bikini places. And though my Fiji knowledge is in the long past Indian girls definitely not and also Fijian girls aren’t into skimpies either

Just had a flashback of Colo I Suva. That was a great swimming place.

zymurgybob

Seriously, keep us posted.

@richard said: Sounds like everyone is now days in the "bunch of old farts" categories. 8-}

Man, that hurts. Of course everything hurts these days. :((

richard

For fun, I would love to do an age roll call and see the age of peoples on the forum.

I am presently 61. Now that's a big ouch and am getting prepared for the next chapter

Kapea

Captain Kangaroo's first episode aired on the day I was born.

He was a big fan of Red Star (not USSR) Active Dry Yeast too.

DonMateo

Ok roll call. I am 47 and sbout to turn 48. Trying to change career from construction guy into tax dodging bootlegging moonshiner.

FloridaCracker

@richard said: Sounds like everyone is now days in the "bunch of old farts" categories. 8-}

Go ahead and add me to that list.

And get off of my lawn.

FC

punkin

I'm only 20 and have been for a long time.

richard

:)

SingleMaltYinzer

@grim - thanks. Yet more to think about when choosing yeast & understanding esters.

crozdog

i'm 38 - the same as the abv in our vodka.

if only lol

Sam

Wow, I'm reading this thread and at 36 feeling really young now, thanks thats really cheered me up!

Maybe the love of bakers yeast starts at 40?

punkin

Not for this little aussie. Good for bread.

Kapea

@Sam said: Wow, I'm reading this thread and at 36 feeling really young now, thanks thats really cheered me up!

Maybe the love of bakers yeast starts at 40?

I've got underwear older than you... :))

Sam

@Kapea just so long as they get washed every now and again!

Kapea

Where's the fun in that?

DonMateo

On a continuation of the yeast thread I am curious if anyone is using bread yeast for a corn whiskey mash ?? It looks as though I will have 14 days at my house over Christmas so I am going to make some whiskey and was thinking about doing a charter whiskey wash but try bread yeast this time.

grim

Yeah works just fine.

If you’ve got a few small 5g home brew yeast packets - just dump them all in. It’s fun to do an all-in yeast roulette.

MotherOfDragon

I just ran out of my fancy Lallemand RM yeast and am using bakers yeast now. I am running my still right now with the first wash with bakers yeast and the product comes out in a very thin stream. Very slow stilling today! I did not measure the wash before and after fermentation, but I suspect that the wash contains a lower percentage of alcohol than with RM. What do you think?

I am a woman. I am ageless ;)

DonMateo

@grim, Well I used to use EC1118 and another champagne yeast called DV10. I would just add them together but I think I am going to do a combination of a good yeast and Bakers. Thanks for the feedback. MOD you are ageless!!

Stinky

I can't get aroudn the feeling there is a lot of urban myth around yeasts for distilling. I've heard professional distillers swearing by champagne yeast, and another saying "I just use bread yeast" (don't know which one he was using). M1 is also praised. I did taste the bread yeast guy's final product and it was frankly awesome. My conclusion is that while it matters, in the grand scheme it is not that big a factor (taking aging, finishing, mashing, distilling and ingredients used into account).

That said, I did put it to the test and am currently running 4 samples with champagne, ale, lager and breadyeasts. I'll let you guys know if anything interesting comes from it.

grim

There are differences between yeast, some good, some bad.

A good distiller can’t make a good product with a marginal yeast. A bad distiller can make a shitty product with the best yeast.

There are lots of variables that make yeast testing very difficult. Even minor variations in heads cut, for example, may have a larger overall impact than yeast strain. It’s very difficult to do side-by-side comparisons.

The urban myth is that bread yeast is only good for bread (to make more co2), that wine yeasts can only ferment grapes, or that whiskey yeasts can only make whiskey. The fact is, most of these yeasts are far more similar than different.

You can’t look at yeast strain selection outside of the process and constraints the distiller needs to work under. High/low nutrient, fermentation temperature control, ambient temp if uncontrolled, fermentable/sugar source, pitch rates, durations, sanitization, etc.

Guy I know over at Lallemand tells me a lot of tequila producers are using beer yeast now. Given the challenges everyone has mentioned about agave, seems crazy to me, but ......

Kapea

Yeast variety is hugely important in beverages consumed in the fermented state. Not so much for distilled beverages. Healthy fermentations are a prime consideration in both cases.

Once you get the routine down for a particular distilled spirit (read repeatabilty across many batches) then you can start to explore what influence the yeast variety has on the spirit.

Change one variable at a time and objectively access the results. Not an easy task when starting up a profit-driven distillery.

Most find a yeast variety that works for them and focus on the other variables that provide the coarse tuning needed to produce a profitable product.

Yeast variety represents fine tuning, and comes in way down on the list of tweaks to improve an already tasty product.

For a hobby distiller (and a yeast farmer) profit is irrelevant. In that case it's Katy-bar-the-door!

grim

Correction.

A good distiller can make a good product with a marginal yeast.

Fiji_Spirits

I’m of the opinion that until you get a recipie and process down that trying different yeasts won’t be really worth the expense.

I’ll bet that if you could make a decent spirit with a cheap bread yeast that you’d be able to “next level” it with a better yeast at that point.

grim

I'll also add, even more important than strain of yeast used for fermentation, is active fermentation temperature control. So, if you aren't actively cooling/controlling fermentation temps, arguing about yeast strains is moot.

DonMateo

You guys are my heros. I cant wait to get back home and do some fermenting. I am in Lima now punching the ticket in a cube farm. But its not often you get to attack US$10 billion dollar estimates. Yeyy.

Kapea

I went to Leopold Brothers Distillery in Denver last summer. They have planted a garden adjacent to their fermentation room, with plantings that they determined provide beneficial wild microflora (wild yeast and bacteria) for spontaneous fermentation in their mashes. Just inside from the garden, through the open windows of their fermentation room, are 16 open fermentors. It is an amazing setup, the likes of which I've only seen at lambic beer breweries in Belgium. Does it make a difference? I don't know. They seem to think so. They've invested quite a bit in setting it up.

What I do know is their whiskeys are some of the best I've ever tasted. I brought back a bottle of their cherry whiskey and served it after Thanksgiving dinner last Thursday. It was even better then than when I tasted it at the distillery last August.

Their cherry whiskey is made by putting their American Small Batch Whiskey into used bourbon barrels and adding Michigan Montmorency cherry juice to the barrels for further aging. The result is absolutely amazing. Like cherry pie in a bottle - Tart, sweet, very cherry, very complex. Very easy to drink too much. How much of that comes from the spontaneous fermentation? Beats me. It is quite reminiscent Belgian kriek lambics I like so much though.

They warned me that the cherry starts to oxidize once the bottle has been opened, but not in a bad way - kinda of like a tawny port. I put my open bottle in my deep freezer to slow the oxidation until it can be revisited at Christmas. Then if there is any left we'll try the oxidized part for new years.

Smaug

Sounds really good. So no cough syrup, medicinal thing going on then?