North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Terence Bradshaw <madshaw@innevi.com>]

As a cidermaker producing 30-100 gallons per year, I've played around
with yeasts a fair bit.  I agree that yeast culture has a very
significant effect on wine and cider quality.  In various years I've
done multiple 5 gallon batches of the same must, each fermented with
different yeasts, including wild yeasts from the fruit and press I
use.  Overall, foe cider, I found the wild yeasts present the most
complex and pleasing flavors.  This assumes that your fruit have a
good culture of yeasts and/or your press has accumulated them. My friend
who presses for me, and many others, has a wood press, never presses
fungicide-treated fruit, and does not sanitize the press aside from a
good washing down.  This unit holds an excellent population of
yeasts which have built up over the years.  Consequently, sweet
cider from this press ferments very quickly, and oxygen exclusion is very
important to avoid acetification.
I have used other presses, including a commercial unit which is sanitized
and follows HACCP code and therefore does not, I feel, have the yeast
inoculum inherent on it.  I have used this press for my
fungicide-treated fruit which should also have lower populations of yeast
present and invariably different yeasts at that.  
As I said, I prefer the character of ciders from the natural yeasts when
possible.  Of the commercial yeasts, I have used the powdered forms
and while they will ferment, they do not seem to offer as clean a profile
as the pure liquid cultures.  Dry yeasts generally come in a narrow
range of selections, inludng ale, lager, champagne, and other wine
yeasts.  I am not a fan of ale yeast, as it requires too warm a
ferment which tends to volatilize the aromatics in the finished
cider.  I have not tried lager yeasts, but suspect that these may
work better at a 45-50 degree F ferment.  Champagne I am not fond
of, as it totally dries out the cider an also throws off your
aromatics.  Some of the other wine yeasts aren't bad, including
Montrachet and some of the white wine products.
Generally the liquid yeasts offer much greater selection, as the link
given will show.  I have had excellent success with Wyeast's cider
and mead yeasts.  While they may cost a little more, you're getting
a better, more stable product, and one packet can go a long way if you
step culture to increase to pitching amount.

Just my $0.02

TB

> We just recently had a wine buyer come to
> visit & I was talking to him 
> about my rustic wine making process & he made the point repeatedly
> that 
> quality of wine has as much to do with the complexity of the yeast 
> culture as the fruit itself.  He said many of the memorable home
> made 
> wines which he's sampled over the years have used liquid yeast 
> cultures.  Have others used these & what kind of success have
> you had?  
> He pointed me to the website listed below as being very high quality
> yeast.  He thought the difference would be especially noticeable for
> small fruit wines such as currant, gooseberry, elderberry etc..
>
> http://www.wyeastlab.com/hvino/homewine.htm
>
> mIEKAL

=================================================================

Terence Bradshaw 

Pomona Tree Fruit Service        

1189 Wheeler Road

Calais, VT 05648        

(802)229-2004

madshaw@innevi.com          

The views represented are mine and mine only...