Different kinds of yeast

[WineWash]

Hello fellow brewers.

I have brewed up a lot of tasty beverages with the caps and supplied yeast.

What are the other types of yeast that other people have tried?

Do they give a noticeably different flavor to the finished product?

I read somewhere that baking yeast was dangerous to use... Why?

How many different kinds of good wine yeasts are there?

When they evolve into new strains (by reusing the yeast more than roughly 6 times,) are the new flavors always "off" ?

I have an old book written by an old iconoclast that recommends making home made wine by letting wild yeasts start the fruit juice... Anyone ever tried it?

Thanks for reading and sharing your experiences!

[ezcaps_phpbb3_import2]

Hello fellow brewers.

I have brewed up a lot of tasty beverages with the caps and supplied yeast.

What are the other types of yeast that other people have tried?

Do they give a noticeably different flavor to the finished product?

I read somewhere that baking yeast was dangerous to use... Why?

How many different kinds of good wine yeasts are there?

When they evolve into new strains (by reusing the yeast more than roughly 6 times,) are the new flavors always "off" ?

I have an old book written by an old iconoclast that recommends making home made wine by letting wild yeasts start the fruit juice... Anyone ever tried it?

Thanks for reading and sharing your experiences!

Those are a lot of good questions. There are a lot of different kinds of wine yeasts and usually you select a yeast specific to the type of wine you are making. The same goes for beer. One of the things to take into consideration is that it's not just adding a different type of yeast to produce a different flavor, you usually have to change something about the fermentation conditions. For example if you use an ale yeast and let the fermentation temperature get too warm, the beer will taste awful.

Evolution into new strains is beyond my knowledge base but the "6 times" number is fairly arbitrary, I've reused the same beer strain for years and never had a problem. Usually after 6 times the problem isn't with a new or mutated strain, it has more to do with contamination with bacteria or wild yeast that causes off flavors.

The wild-yeast thing will work if you are starting with a whole product (grapes, not grape juice) and you are living in a place that has such yeasts. I wouldn't recommend it for most people.