Hello, I have made several batches of mead and I really enjoyed it. How much of a difference is there with mead vs cider?

  • Interesting, I’m not too familiar with that yeast. I’m looking at lallemand’s page for belle saison and noticed this

    Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. diastaticus strains are capable of utilizing some types of dextrins. Extra care should be taken to ensure proper cleaning procedures are in place to avoid any cross-contamination with other brews.

    Any issues with that in your experience, or do you just use dedicated equipment with it?

    • In regards to using dedicated equipment, if your cleaning and sanitizing practises are good it shouldn’t be a concern. Since it is a yeast not a bacteria, even if you don’t perfectly sanitize your equipment it will usually get massively out-competed by the yeasts you pitch in future batches since those cell counts are much much higher. The best thing you can do with brewing is taking good notes of every batch. That way you can see if your beers are finishing lower than expected.

    • The main concern with diastaticus yeasts is a lower than expected terminal gravity. Diastaticus yeasts are capable of producing amyloglucosidase which can break down the unfermentable sugars that contribute to final gravity in beer. Since mead and cider (and other fruit wines) are mainly fully fermentable sugars to begin with, diastaticus yeasts aren’t really a concern.

      •  robotrono   ( @robotrono@lemmy.sdf.org ) 
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        11 months ago

        Diastaticus is more of a concern for breweries if it gets into batches where it wasn’t planned for and continues to lower the final gravity due to the introduction of glucoamylase. If the product is packaged to soon it will lead to very bad outcomes with bottle/cans blowing up.This has even caught some very large breweries (Left Hand vs. White Labs comes to mind) but has more often happened at smaller breweries in the last couple of years. Not a fun experience - I know from first hand experience.