King of Yeasts

[lockwood1956]

Just thought I'd quote this. Jedi mind tricks or NostraBobus

A bit of both

[spritzer]

K1-V116: No foam. SG 1.102

Typo ??
Or something else mystical ?

[koomber]

Typo ??
Or something else mystical ?

glad somone is paying attention! Fixed it now.

[NorthernWiner]

Bread Yeast: 1cm foam. Complete Covering. SG 0.990. Yup 0.990

Not that surprising really. When it comes down to it, good old bread yeast is just another strain of saccharomyces cerevisae, same as wine yeast.

[koomber]

Well, I've been holding off on this post for a while now. Mostly out of embarrasment.

The King of Yeasts was by and large a failure. You see, most of the the samples stallled.
Out of all of them only the bread yeast and the GV2 (which was trailing) made it to 0990. And the bread yeast went manky. Autolysis set in somewhere between the 11th and the 18th when I checked and it had to be binned. It smelled VILE

Perhaps the bigger failure was my hydrometer reading. Basically my trial jar has a bit on the top where it comes in and the hydrometer would lean towards it and throw the readings by quite a bit. I've changed my technique now to avoid this in future.

Although it was a bit of a disaster all round, I have taken the GV1, K1-V116 and D47 and chucked them all in a Demijohn where they shall live on as a restarted Wine #1 so at least I get practice restartign a stalled ferement

I think the biggest thing I'll take from this is that small volumes don't work! Or if they do, it is alot harder to keep them going. I've had one batch go manky and none stall on me before and it was a little unnerving seeing 4 all develop faults.

I think the only conclusion (and I think it is fairly empirical) is that To minimise the risk of ferments failing and stalling, it is MUCH safer to do larger volumes...

EDIT* Since I have a large volume, might it be an idea to do a late addition of something? The denisty it about 1.008 or would it be better i didn't futz around with it?

[NorthernWiner]

One thing that may help is to add nutrient in staged additions. I don't generally add any nutrient at all before pitching yeast. Then after the lag (growth) phase, I add half the nutrient. The 2nd half is added when the sugar is one-third depleted.

Adding everything up front will sometimes cause distress to less robust strains of yeast. Think of it this way: suppose you get up in the morning and eat a kilo of oatmeal (with another half kilo of sugar tossed in) and nothing else for the rest of the day. You probably would not feel at your best, and as the day wears on and your blood sugar rapidly drops you will feel progressively worse.

By spacing out nutrients over time, you give the yeast an opportunity to replenish their electrolyte and nutrient stores, thus ensuring a successful - and complete - fermentation.