Yeast help needed please

[Steve k]

Evening all.

I am looking at starting of three 5l fruit juice wines off tonight. I am all ready to go.........but have just realised I only have two sachets of yeast.

Would it do any harm to mix them up and divide by three? Or as they are different brands, perhaps split one sachet between two brews and put a full sachet in the other?

Sorry for the newbie question :wha: .....please help.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Moley]

What yeasts have you got?

 

[Steve k]

Cheers.

I have a Youngs All purpose white and a Muntons Gervin No 3

Steve

 

[Moley]

I think I would be inclined to use the GV3 on its own and split the Young's between two.

 

[Steve k]

Thanks.

I'll give it a go.

Out of curiosity, on the back of the Youngs Yeast is says "Sufficient for 5 gallons". Does this mean that the contents could theoretically be divided by five and used to start five brews?
Or is it the norm to use one sachet per brew, whether one gallon or five?

Cheers for the help

Steve

 

[mackem brewer]

I'm no expert but the yeast will be dividing and dying, so in theory yeah you could but it would take them much longer to ferment and turn all that sugar to alcohol as their will be a much smaller colony of yeasties to start with

hope this helps :thumb:

 

[Ceejay]

You need to have a specific number of yeast cells in a given qty of wort/must/juice/whatever to get a healthy fermentation, depending on the OG of whatever liquid it is.

For example a gallon of 1040 beer needs 38 billion cells for a healthy ferment, which is about 2 grams of dry yeast. Underpitching can result in some unwanted flavours being produced and you need a good healthy ferment to get the best possible product, which includes getting a good build up of CO2 which will shield the brew from oxidation.

Getting a good fermentation is just about the most important thing in brewing :thumb:

I'm sure this calculator http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html could be used for wine as well as beer. Give it a go :thumb:

 

[Steve k]

As an update, I didn't really know what to do so I tried an experiment.

I divided the one packet that said on the back "suitable for five gallons" between the three brews.

Everything seem to be bubbling away fine albeit at different rates and the kitchen smells brilliant, let's hope it stays that way.

Cheers

Steve