Tag: yeast

Philly Sour Wine

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I won a bottle of wine base at one of our meetings a ways back. And I’m looking to do more “experiments” so I grabbed a packet of Philly Sour yeast to use with it.

I guess my plan is to let the Philly yeast do it’s souring, then pitch the 1118 to chew it down.

Doing the full 5 gallons. So thats the gallon of base plus 4 gallons of water. But I subbed out 3/4 gallons of the water for 3/4 gallons of grape juice. Just for another layer of flavor..plus it might help the souring part of the Philly.

I did do some nutrient at pitch. But there is usually some decent lag time with the Philly because it does two phases. Phase one is the souring, then after that the yeast part takes over and starts the fermenting. And that might take a day…. Or two. So I won’t start the rest of the nutrient program until the ferment actually starts.

My water out of the tap is 50F right now, so I warmed it up to 75F where I will be fermenting at. After getting everything mixed I had an OG of 23 Brix or 1.096. So if everything goes as planned we should be looking at a 12%ish wine.

Nutrient Notes for the Cider and Wine season

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Stepped Nutrient Additions

Cider mead and wines need a bit of help in the nutrient dept to both get started and finish out. Luckily any homebrew store with have just what you need.

The approach is similar in wine, cider and mead. But because of differences in gravity and the varieties of yeast chosen, there are sometimes slight changes in procedure.

Ideally you would use both Fermaid-K and DAP (diammonium phosphate) But that can be hard to find. If you cannot find Fermaid-K, doubling the amount of DAP will greatly help.

These amounts are for 5 gallons

(currently working on a standard plan for using Kviek yeast which is a whole other animal)

Wine and Mead

Day 1- Pitch yeast as normal. After 8 hours stir in ¼ teaspoon each Fermaid-K and DAP

Day 2- Stir 5-10 minutes to release Co2. (be careful if using a carboy. Think mentos here)

Day 3- Stir in ¼ teaspoon each Fermaid-K and DAP

Day 4- Stir to release more Co2

Day 5- Another ¼ teaspoon each Fermaid-K and DAP

Day 6- Stir

Day 7 One more ¼ teaspoon each Fermaid-K and DAP

-Your yeast is now on its own to finish its primary ferment. 2-5 weeks is normal

Cider basically the same just shorter (ale/cider/wine yeast..Not Kviek)

Day 1- Pitch yeast as normal. After 8 hours stir in ¼ teaspoon each Fermaid-K and DAP

Day 2- A good stir and ¼ teaspoon each Fermaid-K and DAP

Day 3- Another stir and ¼ teaspoon each Fermaid-K and DAP

Kviek yeast Cider– (in progress) The thing with Kviek is the speed at which it works and the amount of nutrient it requires.

Kviek can take a 1.080 cider down to .999 in 3 days. But it needs much more nutrients to stay clean. 

In 3 gallon batches I have been using 2 teaspoons of DAP at pitch,  and then another teaspoon 8-10 hours later. Even only 8 hours after pitching you are at full on, violent ferment with Kviek. So just chucking dry DAP into a carboy would not be advisable unless you have a mop ready. A bucket type fermenter or something with a wide mouth or a few gallons headspace is your friend here. 

I have not seen a reason to try and stir this because its so fast. I am thinking any stirring after the first day would probably start to cause oxidation. So I am already questioning that 8th hour addition. But I have had no ill effects yet.

I will be starting a Wine made with Kviek this week as well. This 2 teaspoon at the start and another a few hours later will be my starting point as well.

Stay tuned

Kviek numbers

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This past cider “brew” had some interesting numbers. And by interesting, I mean confusing. I can only tell you the observations and reactions of what I have taken notes and measurements on.

I think we have all made a basic cider at one time or another. Apple juice, some sugar and some yeast. And we got a basic thin, dry as a bone cider. Some people like that, some don’t. Those that don’t usually do one or both of two things to get a sweeter cider.
-back sweeten
-use beer yeast

Back sweetening is just purposely killing off the yeast in order to add a sugar to sweeten it back up without it refermenting. Or adding an unfermentable sugar like lactose or Stevia (both completely change the flavor of said cider)

But by using the beer yeast, the yeast stops early enough to keep the cider sweet and have some body. Plus beer yeast has multiple profiles of flavor and aroma esters that one can play with.

So this last cider that I did I used the dried Voss Kviek yeast. Its generally regarded as a beer yeast. And most of us by now have used a Kviek and see that it does perform just as other beer yeasts do, with predictable numbers and flavors but with bigger temp ranges.
With the cider however we got something different. While the flavors were what we expected for the temp range that I used (60F which Voss Kviek gives stonefruit.. Peach, nectarine plum…) the final gravity was down to 0.996. Nothing like what a beer yeast would do. And thats intriguing for all kinds of reasons.

But first, let’s run through some of the numbers that different yeasts have done for me through the past 10 years or so. These will look very familiar to you.

Beer numbers
Nottingham: 1046-1010, 1050-1010, 1066-1012
US05: 1056-1008, 1066-1008
US04: 1058-1010, 1042-1008
Voss Kviek: 1052-1008, 1040-1008

Cider numbers
Nottingham: 1062-1010, 1070-1012
US05: 1060-1008
US04: 1080-1014
Voss Kviek: 1070-0.996


Note: Here is one of the problems I have here today. While I have made plenty of ciders with several different types of yeast for decades, I don’t have much for actual written numbers from long ago as I was more concerned with the beer side, and the cider numbers were reliable enough they didn’t warrant keeping track. Not until about 12 years ago when I started this blog did I start to jot down cider numbers. And even then just sporadically. Sure I took the measurements to see whats going on, but they were so reliable time after time that I just stopped writing them down. And only recently started with the Kviek so do not have a ton of available personal numbers.

As you can see, I fully expected to see similar cider numbers from the Kviek because they were producing similar numbers as the beer yeasts when used in beer. But I’m still trying to figure out why they didn’t carry over to cider.

The cider is the simple version of just the juice, a bit of sugar and yeast and is perfectly on par with the taste of a beer yeast cider. There’s the apple of course, and the Kviek added the peach. No off flavors or flaws, clear. A great cider. Just 10% and drier as compared to the expected 7ish% and sweeter
But why does it act so differently in a cider than in a beer?

With a quick look at these numbers, some would say its because there are all those unfermentables in the beer.
While this is true, it cannot be the only reason the yeast stops working when it does because the beer yeasts are pulling the same-ish numbers in the cider that doesn’t have those unfermentables, and it’s being force fed nutrients to keep them going but they still stop as predicted. Plus we would see much lower numbers if the Kviek was munching on something else in the beer that regular yeast does not.

Can’t be the abv. We have a smear of range here and they act the same, plus we know that ones I have listed can go much higher in abv and still follow predicted numbers with little or no help.

Ph? I didn’t measure, and it could be a possibility. But I would expect to see this reflected somehow in the Kviek beer numbers. Plus I think the sour people would have latched on to this by now.

I’m still not sure why Kviek seems to act differently in a cider environment than it does in beer. But It’s good to know that it does, so one can plan around it, and plan other things,, like wine?
If I am missing something obvious here, let me know. Until then I’m going to use what I have seen to my advantage.