Beer Forum

I'm pondering a mead in the future... I have a ton of viable 001 around, but obv. wine/champagne yeast seems to be heavily favored for meads.

Anyone use brewers yeast for a mead/ what did you use/ any tips/ is it stupid?

ive seen a heap of beer yeast used.
i really like the 1388 personally

It just depends on the mead. If you're looking for a high gravity dry mead, 001 is going to have some issues fermenting down all the way and tolerating the alcohol.

ApresSkiBrewer wrote:I'm pondering a mead in the future... I have a ton of viable 001 around, but obv. wine/champagne yeast seems to be heavily favored for meads.

Anyone use brewers yeast for a mead/ what did you use/ any tips/ is it stupid?

I used Danstar's english ale yeast and it turned out great--very sweet, though. Also I used unrefined sugar for bottling, and it was very fizzy. Overall a great experience.

If you want your mead to have beer flavors go for it!!

If you want your mead to have mead/wine flavors use wine yeast. Beer yeasts really can't handle the high OGs of most meads. Use a wine yeast for meads they are made for high OGs.

Now if you are doing a braggot then by all means use a beer yeast.

Oh and skip the Irish moss in meads. Not needed at all.

I figured with proper DAP/nutrient dosing 001 could handle a mead targeted for 10% ABV. or so. I might just order up the wyeast dry mead from northern brewer and take a crack at it with that... but then again it looks like I might just get enough honey for 3 batchs. Do one w/ the wyeast, and split some of the 001 into the other two (lower gravity). Hmm... starting to sound like a plan.

I've used Nottingham a few times successfully. You'll have to play around with it to figure out the alcohol tolerance in a simple sugar must (mead). I made a few at 10% that went fine, just be sure to oxygenate heavily for the first few days and use nutrients too. (fermaid-k, dap)