I’ve used White Labs English cider yeast and White Labs Champagne yeast any other suggestions I may want to try?
Wyeast makes a cider yeast that I like.
you could try some beer yeasts. Belgians maybe. or english.
I prefer Côte des Blancs for cider. You still have to back sweeten it.
Cote des Blancs is good. My favorite of the moment is good old US-05. If you use liquid yeast, be sure to step it up to a big starter (using some sweet apple cider as the liquid).
I like Red Star Premier Cuvee and fermenting around 45-50F. Cold fermentation helps maintain the aromatics from the apples and premier cuvee is very cold tolerant.
I’ve used a few. From Nottingham, to the WL English Cider to us-05. I think theres been a champaigne yeast in there somewhere along the line. I liked the WL English cider the best. It was clean, crisp and tart. Went all the way down to practically zero. I back sweeten to 08 or 10 and it makes a really nice cider.
I think I’m going to try Wyeast 4134 sake yeast in my 3 gallon cider batch coming up. I bought it to make sake but never got around to it so I figured I’d use it now before the viability is questionable.
I like either a champagne yeast or the Wyeast cider yeast. My experience is that yeast strain doesn’t make nearly as much difference in cider as it does in beer. I’ve made and tasted ciders made with Belgian strains that can have a lot of character on beer, but in cider you’d never know it was a Belgian yeast.
I have used the Wyeast Cider Yeast several times and it works well. I have used champagne yeast as well. As expected the champagne yeast ends dry and bottles very well. The cider yeast leaves a lot more fruit flavor in my opinion but doesn’t bottle as nicely.
I haven’t taken the step of using champagne yeast to bottle since I’ve been worried that it will eat up more sugar than the cider yeast. I just wait an extra month or so before enjoying.
In either case make sure you pitch a lot of healthy yeast. It always seems to take a bit longer even with nutrient added for my ciders to get moving.
I like the idea of using Belgian yeast. I guess I never really thought about using “beer yeast” for cider. It makes a lot of sense if you are looking to add some other flavors with the yeast. I should try a small batch.
Belgian yeast used in cider doesn’t taste anything like beer with Belgian yeast. Don’t expect what you think you should expect. It won’t happen.
I agree. I’ve tried many yeasts and the characteristics listed for yeasts, wine or beer, don’t really apply when fermenting something different, like apple juice. Those characteristics must depend on the presence of certain sugars and other compounds in wort or grape must.
Depends if the juice is pasteurised/sulfited or not. If not, just let it ride and use the natural yeasts already present.
Else, Lalvin KV or EC work well.
What a coincidence. I was at a friends tonight who moved here from England and he was commenting that cider here was sweeter than cider in Britain. Do all the yeasts make a dry cider that is back sweetened or do some yeasts finish drier than others? I said I’d try a cider for him so this is a great thread to see active.
I was going to use unpasteurized cider pressed fresh from the orchards down the road. Any apples that are better than others?
There is very little difference in residual sugars between yeast strains. Apple sugars are all simple and very fermentable, and the sugar content is low so there is no chance the alcohol content will max out as with wine or mead. Cidermakers trying to retain residual sweetness naturally do things contrary to yeast health in beer brewing - such as stripping out nutrients, underpitching yeast, and racking before fermentation is complete. Other than that, the only option for most is killing the yeast, sweetening, and force carbonating.
Fresh cider from down the road is the best place to start. Taste the sweet cider, the better it tastes, the better the finished product.
Some apples are better than others, but that is a complex topic and the best varieties aren’t widely grown anymore. Try here for more information.
Here’s a link to way too much cider info, but this guy has done more experiments with different yeasts than most of us will ever do, so you can learn from his experience.
I’ve had good success with Nottingham and have also used champagne and premier cuvee yeast.
I preferred the flavor of the cuvee to the champagne, but in all honesty cider is not my thing. It’s super easy to make, though.
I’ve got some fifteen or twenty gallons of it that needs to be consumed. Makes a nice brine for a turkey, though.
I agree with mtnrockhopper regarding using yeast to affect residual sweetness in cider. As far as what your English friend said, I might guess he was referring to what some cider producers may do to their product to make it more appealing to a wide audience, like back sweetening.
The naturally occurring sugars in apple juice are very simple and are completely consumed by yeast during fermentation. This results in a naturally dry-tasting product. Many people prefer a sweeter product. The problem with adding sugar to achieve that sweetness is that if the yeast are still present and alive, they will ferment out whatever sugar you add and the cider will be dryer still.
You can add unfermentable sugars, like lactose, as I do, but if your consumer is one of the 60% of adults that is lactose intolerant, they will not be thanking you.
Most people who back sweeten either filter or pasteurize, and then add either sugar or apple juice to raise the sweetness.
I learned to love hard cider when I was working in England, so I know exactly what your friend is talking about. I really don’t like all the back-sweetened ciders… just too sweet and cloying for my tastes.
I like the white labs english cider yeast. I let it ferment out completely (.998-ish, I think, although it doesn’t really matter.), keg it, and let it age in the keg for 3 - 6 months.
My cider made with Wy2035 is gonna be gone soon. It was quite good after some back sweetening. I thinking will do another but the only yeast I have is Wyeast Kolsch yeast. Thoughts on this for a cider?