Bread Yeast for Wine - A better, cheaper alternative: wine yeast.

It seems silly to recommend wine yeast for wine, but here I am doing so. There are a lot of wine makers that use bread yeast for making wine. Cool. Great. I have no problem with that. But really, what's the logic behind doing so? I asked some winemakers why they chose bread yeast, and I get a lot of answers that are often not true-

It's cheap - Well, that's actually wrong. Wine yeast is cheaper than bread yeast you can get in store. I think the cheapest bread yeast I found in store was 60 cents a pack. I sell a variety of wine yeast for 40 cents a pack. So technically for every two packs of bread yeast you bought, you could have bought three packs of wine yeast.

It works well - This is true and false. It makes alcohol, and you can get a good flavor out of it, sometimes. Since bread yeast has no rules regarding alcohol production quality (since they didn't take that in to account when selecting a strain), the yeast is much more unpredictable. Wine yeast has been closely selected through years of research to maximize alcohol and flavor qualities in wine, mead, fruit wines and the like. If you select the right yeast and treat it well, you will get an equally good, if not always better product using wine yeast over bread yeast.

Bread yeast makes strong wine - So does wine yeast! There are strains that let you get upwards of 22-24% alcohol in your wine! Bread yeast usually can't make it passed 16-18%.

The recipe calls for bread yeast - Well, it might be time to improve upon that recipe, save yourself money, and at the same time, get better results!

Cheers!
Aaron

PS- Any bakers out there looking for a cool alternative to bread yeast should give wine and ale yeast a try. You'll find it gives your bread a slightly different flavor...just don't proof too long, or you will end up tasting some alcohol in your bread;)