Best winemaking yeasts & cultures according to redditors

You raise some good points, but your attitude sucks. Anyway, here are the answers you are looking for:

• Champagne and wine yeasts are often bought my amateur brewers by the packet, similar to baker's yeast. "1 package" is the measurement, it's usually equal to 5 grams, which is a bit less convenient to measure because you need a very sensitive scale and it doesn't fill measuring spoons roundly.
  
  
• During fermentation, the yeast will turn the sugar into ethanol and carbon dioxide (that's why beer and champagne are fizzy, yeast at work). If the carbon dioxide builds up too much, the bottle it is fermenting in would pop its cork or explode. In order to prevent this, the CO2 needs to escape. Because we can't simply leave the bottle uncapped (bugs love to lay eggs in sweet ferments, and oxygen is detrimental to successful fermentation) we need a way to let the CO2 out without letting anything else get in. That is why you use a fermentation trap, also called a fermentation lock or airlock. It lets CO2 out, and keeps anything else from getting in by way of a water barrier. You can pick them up at brewer supply stores for around $1 each. The one pictured is a 3-piece type, though I prefer the S-types because they allow you to keep track of the fermentation rate by noting how quickly bubbles are escaping more effectively.
  
• Dandelion wine is a country wine, and like most country wine, it's going to have some spices or flavors in it besides the main ingredient. Dandelion wine is traditionally made with citrus to compliment the flavor. Folk-culture food is just like that, you'll have a hard time finding unflavored picked egg recipes for the same reason.
  
  
• Also, I'd like to emphasize that only the petals of dandelions are used. If you go find a dandelion and stare it down for a bit, you'll realize they have very few petals, and they are very light and airy. You need a lot of dandelions to do this, even if you only collect half a gallon of petals, it's a full afternoon activity in a dandelion field with your friends just to collect them.
  
  
  The comic is definitely vague; it ends with "let age", but knowing how to rack and age wine is an art all in itself!
  
  TL;DR: If you know nothing about dandelion wine then this comic is a nice primer to which is actually a fairly simple process. It leaves out some details but you probably shouldn't be making wine from a comic's instructions to begin with.
  
  Source: I make dandelion wine, so I guess you were right.

For wine you'd want to use wine yeast (not bread yeast)! The process of making wine is very similar to making fermented hot sauce but there are some additional steps. See this guide and /r/winemaking.

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The difference between the yogurt (lactobacillus) and yeast is that lacto ferments sugar into lactic acid and carbon dioxide. Yeast ferments sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

I'd look into something like this with this with this. So that's $11.50 plus shipping, which at worst would be a total of $20 for 640 ounces of hooch.

If you always keep your hooch at room temperature, you should be able to pour out about 60 oz into another bottle, drink that, then pour new juice on top of the four ounces of remaining old hooch, and the whole process should start over again. Keep on top of it, and you can perpetuate the whole fucking thing.

You should juice all the apricots, then bring the liquid to 89 degrees celcious, maintain this heat for 45 minutes.

Cool it down, and transfer it to a sterile food grade bucket. Purchase this, and put it into your apricot juice. (dissolve it in some water first).

Leave it for 2 weeks. You have apricot wine. lol

It's easy. EASY. It's not like the sweet hornsby's stuff. IT's drier and closer to beer.

If you wanted to experiment I'd buy a gallon or two of apple juice, like tree top. You don't want anything other than ascorbic acid as a preservative, a packet of chapagne yeast. Like this (http://www.amazon.com/Champagne-Yeast-10-Packs-Dried/dp/B00434CB74) You only need one and they're usually about .55 a shot.

Get an air lock like this: http://www.amazon.com/Piece-Plastic-Airlock-Sold-sets/dp/B000E60G2W/ref=pd_bxgy_gro_img_z.

Take your juice and pour yourself a small glass to give it a little airspace.

Take the lid and a drill bit and drill a hole in the juice cap sized right for the air lock to fit into the lid tightly. The plastic is soft so you can force it to get a tight seal. I used a pocket knife. If you want to save the headache, you can spend $2 on a rubber bung to fit the container lid.

Put a couple table spoons of sugar and dissolve it into some warm water. Add, I don't know, maybe a quarter of the packet of yeast. THat little packet is usually for five gallons. Eyeball it.

Let it set and get a little bubbly then add the measuring cup of liquid to your juice jug. Recap it with the air lock and enjoy. YOu can put distilled water or booze into the airlock. It doesn't matter which.

Then you wait.

After a week taste it. If you like it, drink it. If it doesn't taste hard enough wait a few more days. AFter you do the first one, you'll want to do two gallons then five. A gallon goes pretty fast. When it gets to where you like the hardness and sweetness of it, put it in the fridge with the airlock on it. IF you cap it while it's still actively fermenting you could get too much co2 built up in the bottle and have a problem.

Seriously talking about $15 at the MOST to start up and after that, it's the cost of yeast and apple juice.

PM me if you have any questions. I'm not an expert, but I do okay.

Background

Based upon my initial question: Is it wine or meed?, I am working on my first Mead/Pyment. I've taken the original recipe I cobbled together from a variety of sources.

Is it mead? Well yes. According to the calculators in the sidebar concord juice is about 8.89% sugar. Honey is roughly 80%. I'm no math wiz, but I fussed with both Google and Wolframalpha and 8.89% of two gallons is roughly 45 Tablespoons or 0.23 pounds of sugars, 1 Gallon of Honey is roughly equivalent to 204 tablespoons of sugars or 7.9 pounds of sugars. yes I know Different types of sugars, etc. etc. But the mixture here is getting much more than 51% of the sugars from honey, so: 'tis a Wine -> Mead -> Melomel -> Pyment.


The following is an expansion of The GotMead format for recipes.

1. Ingredients
   
   • Star-San - not technically an ingredient, but it's for sterilization. I think of it as an anti-ingredient keeping the bad bugs out. (Sprayer use= 1/4 tsp to 650ml water & 60 second exposure)
     
   • 1.5 Gallons of boiled tap water (more or less to make things work out.) NOTE: I have well water, not city water - so no chlorine & plenty of minerals.
     
   • ~2 Gallons of homemade concord grape juice. (SG 1.060)
     Last year I pressed about about six gallons of grape juice from concords of my own. I was going to make jelly in the winter and froze it in the deep freeze.
     
   • 10lbs (now 15lbs) of Pure N Simple Honey.
     
   • ~3 tsp Fermax from Amazon.
     
   • Red Star Premier Blanc [Amazon] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00434CB74)
     
     
2. Equipment
   
   • Large Stainless stock pot (for initial boil)
     
   • 5 Gallon food grade bucket & Lid sterilized.
     
   • 4 Gallon Sams club water bottle playing the role of carboy.
     
   • Hydrometer
     
   • Transfer hose
     
   • Water lock/ Bubbler
     
     
3. Preparation
   
   • Thaw the grape juice overnight in the fridge in a large container in case of leakage.
     
   • Sterilization/pasteurization.
     Thinking through the volume of Honey (~1 gallon) and aiming for a 4 gallon carboy; bring 1.5 gallon of water to a boil. Turn off heat, add the grape juice in order to pasteurize the juice without setting the pectin, stir in about 10-12 pounds of honey. (remove any scum that forms)
     
   • Sanitize the bucket and lid, and stirring spoon.
     
   • Stir vigorously as you add the ingredients.
     
   • add to the bucket, check the temperature and the SG - calculate remaining honey or water and add as needed. Stir till mixed, or your arm falls off - whichever comes first.
     
   • Check the temperature until it is at least down to about 80 degrees then add the yeast we're off to primary fermentation.
     
     
4. Primary fermentation.
   
   • 5 gallon sterilized bucket & lid with airlock.
     
   • Actual Original Specific Gravity (OG): 1.130 (I thought it was 1.122 but the must was still quite warm.)
     
   • I will plan on testing as fermentation tapers off and make a decision then on adding additional honey and warm water (carefully of course) in order to restart fermentation. (adjust to desired SG as needed).
     
   • Once fermentation has stopped transfer it to the secondary.
     
     
5. Secondary.
   
   • 4 gallon sams club water jug (plastic) with airlock.
     
   • Saved my honey jugs just in case I had any left over that wouldn't fit in the carboy.
     
   • Time. Lots of time.
     
     Notes:
     
     9/13/16 Initial. Retested SG, it was at 1.130.
     
     9/15/16 Sterilized a large spoon and vigerously stirred to aerate. SG at 1.074, fermentation is fast and furious.
     
     9/16/16 Aerated/degassed. 3tsp fermax. SG 1.050
     
     9/16/16 Aerated/degassed. SG 1.026
     
     9/21/16 Racking Day. SG 0.998 (ABV 18%?). Upon racking there was not quite enough in the carboy. After staring at it for twenty minutes I decided to gamble and added one gallon of water, and 5LBS of honey to bring it up to just below the base of the neck. Retesting the SG was 1.030. It is currently sitting inside a 5 gallon bucket in my bathroom, I'll transfer it to the closet as soon as I'm reasonably certain it won't go Mt. St. Helens on my wardrobe.
     
     

So you basically need the following:

• Water
  
• Yeast
  
• Something for yeast to eat
  
• Something to keep the water and yeast in
  
  Water from your tap works fine, even if you live in an area that uses chlorine or chloramine.
  
  I like to use champagne yeast since it's cheap and tolerates a high alcohol percentage while not tasting disgusting.
  
  Sugar is yeast food. You can just dissolve regular sugar in water or you can get fancy and use the sugar in juices and fruits.
  
  For a vessel you need something that can withstand a little bit of pressure and have a way to let gas out. This means always plastic and never glass. Soda bottles or plastic milk cartons work well for this if you put a balloon with a pinhole in it over the top. That lets extra pressure out while not letting anything weird in since yeast isn't the only microorganism that eats sugar (you don't want mold or bacteria).
  
  That's about it! You can flavor it before or after to get different tastes. Quick disclaimer:
  
  > Recipes are undertaken at your own risk, and should be consumed only at the legal drinking age for your area. White mold is your friend, green think again. #hoochresponsibly

should work pretty well. wine yeast is super cheap on amazon, it can tolerate higher levels of alcohol. I use Red Star Cuvee to make Skeeter Pee, which is a baby step up from Kilju in difficulty.

Open cover? Don't you lose carbonation? And when you mean packet, do you mean the whole one of these?

I've been trying to make hard booch for awhile without great success.

Just go to amazon and search the name of whatever yeast.
Lalvin d47

Lalvin 71b

Just for example

Here you go-

3-Piece Air Locks, 3 Piece... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M7TN5BY?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Red Star Red Star Premier Blanc... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00434CB74?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

ATP - Vinyl-Flex PVC Food Grade... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PXJDESI?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

HYDROMETER - ALCOHOL, 0-200 PROOF... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013S1VAM4?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

LD Carlson Yeast Nutrient, 2 oz. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0149IY8F6?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

As far as recipes, I’m still working on these first 2. Adding black tea and raisins and b-vitamins seems to have kept things bubbling.

As far as juices, I get most everything from Aldi (or Trader Joe’s if you’re fancy) very few preservatives, dirt cheap prices and unique flavored juices (Harissa Mango Pineapple juice??!?)

Hope that helps! I’ll post updates as the batch progresses. 2 days from now I’ll probably cold crash and do a gelatin clarifier.

No problem. I didnt bag the berries, but it would have been cleaner if I did. They were colorless and largely pulp by the time the fermentation was done, but they added a lot of excellent flavor. They were largely filtered out when we bottled from the secondary.

We did a second batch with blueberry, which was not quite as well recieved, but was equally interesting. I could see nectarines or maybe peaches as being pretty nice as well.

This is the yeast I used, this is the honey. I dont have the recipe handy, but Im betting I found it on /r/homebrewing. Search there for ciders/cysers and you should find some interesting ones. Also, dont overlook adding brewing nutrients to ciders/cysers. The juice doesnt have the right agents like barley does, and needs some additional "energizing" nutrients to really work. These are mega cheap though, generally pennys every batch. They should be listed on any recipe you find.

Good luck, and as always, have a homebrew.

I do it 5 gallon batches so 5 gallon cheap store apple juice, 2 lbs of corn sugar, 2-3 lbs of peeled shredded ginger, and [champagne yeast] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00434CB74/ref=od_aui_detailpages01?ie=UTF8&psc=1). Put it all in a Fermenter bucket with an airlock. Wait two weeks and bottle it/put it in a keg.

34172 Are surprises allowed?

Edit: Linked an item.

Red star I think. It comes in a yellow package, and is a dry yeast. I'll double check when I get home from class.

-edit-

On the phone but here it is:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00434CB74/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

Red Star Premier Blanc Wine Yeast, 5 g, (Pack of 11) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WFBRV18/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_B4w4DbSMKV9XZ

Champagne yeast is worth it for the 90 cent price! I don't want to by all snotty here but its the one thing imo you gotta spend money on for a decent product.... that having been said I've never tried making hooch with bread yeast. https://www.amazon.com/Pasteur-Champagne-Making-Moonshine-Distilling/dp/B00WFBRV18/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1481124482&sr=8-6&keywords=champagne+yeast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiGu6PxcSUQ

Watch this video. I just started making some based on his recipe. I would increase the speed to 1.25 the guy talks way too slow for me. You could order some airlocks and some yeast on amazon and all he would need is any 2 quart juice he wants that does not have preservatives in it.

The Great Value walmart brand is working well for me, also the Aldi brand Apple juice is working well.

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Star-Premier-Blanc-Yeast/dp/B00WFBRV18/

Air lock would be completely optional as the dudes video he shows you just to do it with the lid on.

Amazon UK has GoFerm at least.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=goferm&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

And fermaid O

https://www.amazon.co.uk/CellarScience-AD332A-Fermaid-O-12/dp/B074D9F114/ref=sr_1_8?keywords=organic+yeast+nutrient+brewing&qid=1566584797&s=gateway&sr=8-8

(Both are available to ship to SW10 at least).

Ive done it before with this. Got 18% and fairly neutral flavor.

Without a proper airlock, the brewing vessel is either going to build up pressure and pop, or it's going to let in all sorts of things from the air, and would be about as safe as any attempt to drink grape juice that's been sitting out on the counter for a few weeks.

It's possible to brew this way, but it's almost guaranteed to end up poorly. There's a very high chance of it going bad, that is, of growing mold or other unwanted microbiotic visitors. You'll probably be able to see this happen.

Even if it doesn't work, the end result will most likely be one of the nastiest forms of wine you've ever had. It's not quite prison hooch, but it'll be close.

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If you and your friends really want to try and get into brewing on the cheap, my suggestion is to start with an airlock and bung like these, find a gallon of apple juice or apple cider at the grocery store in a glass bottle with no preservatives (check the label), and drop in 1/4 of a packet of a brewing yeast like this one. It's a very beginner friendly (and kinda harsh) yeast that will survive mistreatment and bad conditions no problem. You put the yeast in the apple juice, you put a little water in the airlock, you put the airlock on the jug, and wait a month. You'll want to get a food safe hose to siphon out the brew when it's done, and you'll need bottles to age it in (the stuff will taste bad at first but give it 5-8 months and you'll have somethign wonderful). When the brew finishes that first month, fill up the bottles and seal them, then keep them somewhere cool for 5-8 months. Note: you'll need clean glass bottles, and you'll want to sanitize them or else any bugs in there will make the brew go bad while it ages. I like swing top bottles, they don't require a capper machine or a supply of caps.

Total cost to brew up a simple tasty cider, including all supplies:

• ~8$ for the gallon jug of cider to start.
  
• ~2$ for a pack of EC1118 yeast (the amazon link above is for 5 packets)
  
• ~3$ for an airlock and a bung
  
• ~18-20$ for a half dozen 16oz swing top bottles
  
• ~5$ for a hose
  
  Coming out to less than 50$ to get started, and most of that you won't have to buy again for later brews. If you find a local homebrewing shop you might be able to get these things cheaper... or not. At least you should be able to find them in single packs instead of amazon's bulk sets.

I have some extra packs of Red Star Premier Cuvee wine yeast that I'll send out for free as long as I can send it via normal USPS first class mail (shipping confuses me but I think this would work). Allegedly up to 18% alcohol tolerance. People report success with wine, cider, and beer with this yeast.

For a drier cider I’d use Champagne Yeast. You should either get more juice or a smaller bucket/carboy.

>Will you be giving the yeast a proper starter and vitamins?

I don't think I will, unless it's something I can do with household items. I'm trying to challenge myself to do this as frugally as I can. I'm basically just using yeast and this airlock
> Will you be crashing them or running them the entire time?

I'm not too familiar with the terminology, but my plan is to add the yeast to fruit juice, wait until it stops reacting, and then pour it into another container through a cheesecloth to filter out the inactive yeast.
>What is the temperature where they are fermenting?

Room temp, roughly 65-70
>What is the starting gravity?

Not too sure about this. I'm probably going with grape juice or some fruit concentrate. Could I measure this with a scale?
>What is the max ABV of the yeast?

I couldn't find those specifications, but all the reviews suggest it's the ideal product for brewing with juice. Maybe it'll say on the back of the packet?

I've considered buying the e-z caps too. But then I realized it's essentially one of these airlocks with a convenient screw top attachment to fit on a standard 2 liter bottle and some yeast. If you're trying to go cheap, it might be worth putting together the few pieces necessary to DIY, add some rubber stoppers and a gallon jug of juice and you're pretty much good to go.

In fact, I might just buy all that stuff now...

Edit: It'd probably be cheaper at a local homebrew shop, none of these links I put in here actually come from Amazon so you can't get combined or Amazon Prime shipping. :(

Everyone's got time for it! Next time you're at the store, get a gallon or two of apple juice... the one in the glass jug. Get one or two Of these and a few packets Of this and you're good to go. If you want to get to the scientific part, get one of these to measure potential and finished alcohol content.

Dump out 1/3 of the juice, add more sugar for more alcohol if you want, add the yeast, put the air lock on and throw it in a dark place for a few weeks ;)

Cut out the middleman:
10 packets of Champagne yeast: $5.50
2 airlocks: $5.99

What yeast did you use?

I've used both Lalvin 71B-1122 and Lalvin D-47. The 71B was very drinkable shortly after racking while the D-47 is best left for about 6 months. Those were both recommended in the forums I read prior to starting mead making.

How good is this yeast?

Got a packet with 3lbs of dakota clover honey in a 1-gallon jug going with this yeast for 1 week, now.