Wine Yeast in India for Home Brewers

Under professional additives, we have tons of fining agents like Bentonite, Isinglass, Irish Moss, and Gelatin that you can use to make your home brew clear. For instructions and dosage refer to this link

Methanol a.k.a. wood alcohol is generated from fermenting wood, pectin, skins of fruits, and distillation. There is a simple WHO-approved test to check for dangerous levels of methanol. The various strains of brewer’s yeast aka Saccharomyces cerevisiae that we stock will produce ethanol by fermenting glucose (grape sugar), maltose (grain sugar) and fructose (fruit sugar). Methanol is a toxic byproduct of fermentation, but its levels are so low that unless you distill your homebrew, you should be safe. If you still want to test for methanol levels, please refer to this document.

This is one of the most common faults in amateur home brew. It could be because of process issues or improper bottling and storage. It is discussed in detail in the links.

Diamond: Chemically these are Potassium Tartrate crystals, at the bottom of the wine bottles. Wine with excessive levels of tartaric acid tends to exhibit these diamond/ sugar like structures during aging. The best way to get rid of them is to cold crash (24 hours at 4o C) and then bottle. It is sediment in the bottle and does not affect the sensory perception in any other adverse way. One of the reasons expensive wine bottles have a dimpled base is that these crystals are stuck to the dimple structure at the bottom and are not poured out in the wine glass.

Hooch is a crude American term for any unfinished, freshly fermented wine or alcoholic beverage. It has a negative connotation because the product is often homemade with primitive fermentation techniques and hence equivalent to Desi Daru (देसी दारू) As per excise department, it is also categorized under the same category.

Toddy is the Indian term for Indian country/village wines which are not made from a traditional recipe i.e. not following a European grape wine recipe or a British/American apple cider recipe. This Indian traditional alcoholic beverage has a variety of medical, religious, psychological, and even psychedelic effects. Like the Native American Indian culture, Toddy making is acceptable (or overlooked by authorities) as part of a traditional religious and cultural practices. We tried to map a few on this map of India.

Wine, on the other hand, is a more refined sophisticated beverage that can be bottled and stored. Hooch and Toddy need to be consumed within a day or two or it will become too sour and dry for consumption. They typically take 4-8 weeks to make compared to 2-3 days for toddy. Most wines are aged for 6 months to two years before it is ready for serving while country beer/hooch/toddy is served fresh.

Some people confuse Toddy with Feni (Cashew Fruit Alcohol), Mahua (Mahua Flower/cake Alcohol) and Handia (Rice Alcohol). The sugar and starch source for all these 4 traditional Indian Beverages are different. Today fermentation techniques are made more sophisticated. As a result more and more people are consuming them in beer or wine form rather than distilled spirit. Rice Wine is also hazy white, so it is often sold as Toddy. However distilled spirits from these fruits and flowers are closer to Indian Mezcal or Tequila.

A 5gm of wine yeast costs 100/- and is good for about 5 Liters (6.5 bottles of 750ml each). Wine yeast can produce 15-17% alcohol in 3 days and is recommended for most beginners. We deliver it all across India via our courier partner India Post. If you buy bulk packets of 25gm or 100gm, you can save upto 40% on the price of the yeast.

The beer yeast on the other hand costs 175/- for 5gm and is good for about 10 liters or 30 pints of ale beer.

Bread yeast is selected to leaven (raise wheat-based dough), produce a lot of CO2 in a life span of 4-6 hours, and die off. Wine yeast is created in a lab and selected for its ability to produce high alcohol in adverse conditions (like no oxygen, low pH/acidic environment, and high sugar concentration). Yes, you can ferment ethanol with bread yeast, but to make quality wine you would need a special wine yeast.

Wine yeast will produce high ethanol (ferment dry without residual sugar or sweetness), does not produce off-flavors, and bring out the best color and aromas from your grapes and fruits. For more details, please refer to this tutorial 

Yeast is essential for winemaking, without yeast you will have only sweet juice and not wine. Yeast will convert sugar into ethanol alcohol and CO2. Some traditional winemakers don’t add yeast, but that does not mean that they made wine without yeast. What they did use was the natural yeast from the skin of the grapes for their fermentation. This technique is called wild fermentation and requires a biome to be established so that the right strains of microorganisms dominate the white deposits on your grape skin.

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Winemaking is like any fermentation or curd making. If you add too much jaman (curd starter culture), then your milk will turn into curd faster, but there will be no other perceivable change in your final product. However, if you don’t add enough starter culture, then the milk will spoil. Similarly, wines require a dosage of yeast. If the active yeast cell count is too low, you will be prone to spoilage. However, adding too much yeast will only lead to faster fermentation and no other change. The yeast will finish their job fast, settle at the bottom, and will be raked off.

Adding too much yeast nutrients or DAP is serious. It is a chemical and usage of more than 1gm per liter is banned in the USA.

Typically 4-12 days but it depends on a lot of factors:

1. Fermentation temperature. Higher the temperature faster the fermentation is (but beware of the off-flavors produced in yeast fermented at above 25 degrees Celsius)
2. Yeast dosage. although 1gm/liter is recommended. Increasing it to 3gm/liter can produce wine in 2-3 days (50% reduction in time)
3. Availability of yeast nutrients. Grape and fruit juices don’t have enough natural proteins for the yeast to multiply fast. Adding 0.5-1gm per liter of yeast nutrient is sufficient to establish a healthy yeast colony and fast fermentation. Mead is notorious for being slow to ferment and produce nail polish like off-notes because of a lack of nutrients.
4. Sugar concentration: 18-25% w/v of sugar concentration is ideal for fermenting with wine yeast. However higher the concentration, the more time it will take for the yeast to finish its job and produce ethanol.

Yeast is a living creature that is shipped in a dormant condition. So like any organism, they have a shelf life from 3 days to 24 months. It is always important to buy yeast from a reputable store and ensure that it is kept in a cool dry place (away from sunlight and not in the freezer). Using bad yeast means that all the effort you put into making the homebrew will go to waste. There are Four kinds of yeasts used in home brews.

1. Dry Yeast (like the ones sold at arishtam) They have an 18-24 month shelf life.
2. Commercial Liquid Yeast: which has a shelf life of 1 week. If you are buying imported yeast, it might be difficult
3. Self-propagated cultures: You could take some yeast sediment (trub) from your previous batch, wash the yeast, and maintain the culture. As long as you can keep it in the refrigerator and feed it every 3rd day, you can keep it for years.
4. Slants: Seasoned pro home brewers can maintain their slant bank in agar medium for 3 years by freezing them. Home oven-dried yeast is usually able to survive 1 month of storage.

Yeast is the single-celled microorganisms that are responsible for fermenting sugar (maltose, glucose, fructose, sucrose, etc.) to ethanol. In the absence of oxygen, these yeasts do the transformation which converts your grain/fruit into a beverage. Yeast nutrients, on the other hand, are food for the yeast. On their own nutrients achieve nothing more than making a comfortable home for the yeast to function at its best capacity. Yeast energizer, on the other hand, is an SOS remedy needed to recover from stuck fermentation or incomplete fermentation or excessively low-temperature fermentation which can make yeast sluggish.

Although Yeast Energizers are types of nutrient blends, they also contain components such as vitamin B, diammonium phosphate, tricalcium phosphate, magnesium sulfate, and yeast hulls. Yeast energizers are particularly useful to restart a Stuck Fermentation, as it allows yeast populations to increase in a batch of beer or wine which likely has been depleted of these components due to an earlier yeast population growth. The additional components included in Yeast Energizers are most effective when for high gravity fermentation (high sugar high alcohol), low-temperature lagering, excessively low pH, high ash content (molasses) and other extreme fermentation styles.

1. Use extra yeast (3gm per liter will ferment twice as fast as 1 gm per liter. With turbo yeast, you can ferment 18-20% in 3 days.
2. Maintain the temperature between 20 to 25 degree Celsius
3. Add a little quantity of sugar syrup daily rather than all at once. If your recipe calls for 210 gm of sugar per liter, add 70 gm daily for 3 days rather than 210 gm on the first day. This will prevent the dehydrating effect of sugar from slowing down the yeast metabolism.
4. Always hydrate the yeast for 15 minutes at room temperature water (less than 30 degree Celsius temperature) so that it hits your wine running.

Typically bottled home brew beer has a shelf life of 6 months. However, most home-brew beer is consumed within a week to a month of bottling or kegging. However, some people regularly store homebrew beer for up to 6 months successfully. Beyond this, the beer is still safe for consumption, just that it will not taste fresh. However, a couple of factors need to be taken into account to determine the shelf life.

1. Storage temperature: Beer is like wine, higher the temperature the faster is the degradation in flavors.
2. UV light: Even a couple of hours in direct sunlight can ruin a perfectly fresh beer
3. Packaging: Microbrewery Growlers don’t last 2 days because the beer was oxidized during filling. If you see packaging in proper crown sealed glass bottles or stainless steel kegs, 6-12 months life is easy
4. Oxidation: Once you open the bottle, drink within an hour.

 A pH of 3.0 to 3.4. is desirable for white wines, while Red Wines have a pH range of 3.3 to 3.6. Your dry wine should have a higher pH, while your sweet wine typically is at the lower end of the range. This is because sweetness can mask a lot of sour/tartness or acidity.

If the pH is too low, the wine will taste like vinegar. If the pH is too high, then you would need an excess amount of Campden and preservatives to stabilize it. Remember Alcohol and pH are the two natural protection for wine.

Some professionals also measure TA (Total Acidity). It is essentially a measure of how much Calcium Carbonate is needed to increase the pH. The simple morality based calculations don’t work with beer with organic acids. There are a lot of biochemicals that can emit H+ ions but they are so weak that the pH meter does not capture it.

Making grape wine is one of the oldest and simplest fermentation transformation. It is older than the Mahabharat, Ramayan, or Bible. You can get the detailed step by step guide in this recipe. Essentially you need grape juice, some wine yeast, and an airlock.

Yes, you can make amazing wine from tetra pack juice or fresh fruit juice. Just add some sugar and turbo yeast and you are golden. Couple of things to take into account:

1. Make sure the juice is preservative-free. Preservatives retard the microbial action and lead to stressed yeast wine.
2. Don’t buy juice with added colors and artificial flavors. Mango juice is notorious for this it has 5% mango pulp and the rest 95% is added sugar, color, and synthetic essence. You would not want to drink that.
3. Check for acidity. If it is lower than 3.5 (which is the case with most artificially sweetened fruit juices), you need to increase it. Adding some Calcium Carbonate will help to achieve the right pH level.

Yeast is responsible for carrying out the fermentation process in beer making and overall brewing. This is one of the most important part of brewing. Yeast takes up sugars like maltose, glucose and produces carbon dioxide and alcohol. It has the credit for providing various beer styles. The brewer picks up the yeast according to the recipe or the style of the beer they want to make.

Yeast is either an ale yeast or a lager yeast. The former involves warm temperatures while the later needs cool temperatures. This difference in temperature produces different flavor and aroma characteristics and thereby providing various beer styles.

Mangrove Jack’s craft brewer’s yeast sold at arishtam.com is in the dry form. Dry yeast is easy to store, transport, and carry. The wet yeast on the other hand needs to be chilled at all times and has a shelf life of a few weeks (as compared to almost 2 years for dry yeast). As a result for a hobby brewer and even microbrewery dry yeast is much more convenient and easy to use.

Although most manufacturers recommend that you use the yeast directly, but rehydrating the yeast is always advisable for the following reasons:

1. When hydrated, the yeast forms spores and goes into inactive state. By hydrating it in a sugar/wort plus nutrient solution, you give it adequate time and jumpstart to become fully active again.
2. Yeast often dies when expired, mishandled, exposed to humidity or high temperaures during transportation or storage. If you pinch it directly in the wort, it will take 24-48 hours before you can detect yeast inactivity. By hydrating the yeast, you are always 100% sure the yeast is active.
3. Hydrated yeast have a jumpstart over any other contaminents or microbial infection. When the wort is cooled, it sometimes picks up infection from the fermenter or air. If the dry brewer’s yeast is hydrated (good yeast count) they are able to fend off infection by the mere fact that they are more in number and faster in activity.

Process:

1. Take 5-10X of sterlized water (boil the wort or water) (50ml)
2. If you are using water then add some priming sugar or table sugar to make a 5% solution (2.5gm or 1/2 teaspoon). DME or wort can be also used instead of sugar.
3. (optional) add nutrients 1/4gm per 50ml.
4. Boil and cool it to body temperature.
5. Once the solution has cooled to 25-35 degrees celsius then add your yeast (5gm)
6. Wait for 30 minutes to foaming to start and then add it to your beer wort or wine must.

If the foaming has not happened. Then wait for another 30 minutes. If not then the yeast is probably inactive and it might be best to use a backup sachet.