Bottle Carbonation with 71B?

[Farmboyc]

I was contemplating making a sparkling cider or cyser. I am interested in using 71B as my yeast due it's ability to ferment malic acid. I was looking to bottle carbonate this and have a question.

There are numerous posts/resources warning against leaving mead on the lees when using 71B. Would it be a bad idea to bottle condition a cider/cyser that has been fermented with 71B?

Would it be a better idea to pitch some EC 1118 near the end of primary to kill off the 71B and then bottle carb?


Thanks for any input you may have.

 

[Mazer828]

I'm no expert on kill factors, etc., but I do know EC-1118 is much heartier and tolerant of ABV than 71B-1122, so if you tossed EC-1118 in at the end of 71B-1122's run, you'd be setting up a secondary ferment, since 71B-1122 will leave some unfermented sugars that the EC-1118 will happily gobble up. I suppose you could set this up with just the right amount of fermentables that there would be nothing left for the EC-1118 to eat but the 71B-1122, but that would be some fancy footwork. Anyway, if you tossed in the EC-1118 at the end and then bottled without stabilizing...BOOM. Just my 3 cents after 3 glasses of wine, and me having my grumpy pants on.

 

[Farmboyc]

I was actually planning on about 10% ABV. Take it dry then use priming sugar or carbonation tabs then bottle similar to a beer. Either yeast should be able to run this level dry I would think.

My concern was the residual yeast in the bottles. Would 71B give off flavours if it were to sit dormant in the bottle for a year or two? Would adding EC1118 at about 1.030 be enough to kill off the 71B and avoid this potential pitfall? Or should I just not use 71B if I want things carbonated?

 

[Mazer828]

Too many unanswered questions for me. Why would we think 71B would be any less or more apt to creating off flavors sur lie than EC? What exactly happens to a kill factor sensitive yeast when a kill factor yeast is introduced? Does it just get killed, or does it get consumed by the kill factor yeast? Are there by products of the killing that leave undesirable characters? I've heard the kill factor yeast releases a toxin that kills the sensitive yeast. Is this something that can be detected in the final product? And if the 71B just gets killed, and not consumed, then you STILL have dead 71B in your mead, when your goal was to get rid of it.

Agh! My suggestion, for simplicity sake, unless of course you want to turn your drinking project into a biology project that potentially may have NO drinking at the end of it, use the 71B exclusively. Let it finish where it finishes, and then add honey or other priming sugar to carbonate it however much you want. 71B is a great yeast. No reason to start biological armageddon in your cider/cyser, and expect it to be something worth singing praises about.

 

[Farmboyc]

Thanks.

I had the same questions running through my brain - pan.

I think I will try a 3 gal batch with just 71B. See how that goes.

Unless someone else can provide a compelling argument to the contrary.

 

[Maylar]

It'll be fine. 71B is no worse tasting than any other yeast. If you let the cider/cyser clear in secondary before bottling, the amount of sediment from bottle conditioning will insignificant.

 

[sea_child]

Hi there!

if it helps, I use almost exclusively 71B, and I have bottled-conditioned melomels with 71B (both on purpose and on accident), and have opened and enjoyed those meads many times. The most recent was a sparkling pear mel, it did of course have some sediment at the bottom (which I poured carefully to avoid) that was 2 years aged before bottle, 6 mos. in bottle. It was INCREDIBLE. I've even left several meads sitting on the lees (with 71B) for 4, 5, 6 months before racking out of primary, and had zero weird, off flavors. Mead is tough. Everything I've done with 71B has been delicious. I say you're good to go!

 

[Farmboyc]

Hi there!

if it helps, I use almost exclusively 71B, and I have bottled-conditioned melomels with 71B (both on purpose and on accident), and have opened and enjoyed those meads many times. The most recent was a sparkling pear mel, it did of course have some sediment at the bottom (which I poured carefully to avoid) that was 2 years aged before bottle, 6 mos. in bottle. It was INCREDIBLE. I've even left several meads sitting on the lees (with 71B) for 4, 5, 6 months before racking out of primary, and had zero weird, off flavors. Mead is tough. Everything I've done with 71B has been delicious. I say you're good to go!

Did you add additional yeast prior to bottling? Or after 2 years was there enough life in the yeast to successfully carbonate with only a sugar addition?

 

[sea_child]

I've never added additional yeast, only priming sugar (or no sugar!). The yeast in the mead have done all the work themselves. I don't really know the science behind it, just brewing to drink and still learning how it all works on a molecular level

 

[EbonHawk]

I've never added any yeast of any kind, and they have always restarted fermentation, when adding additional fermentables...whether last ferm was a week before, or 6 months before, and whether the refermentation took a week, or a month, they all restarted.

 

[Chevette Girl]

I wouldn't use 71B for bottle carbonation.

I have had some really good results using K1V 1116 for ciders, cysers and bottle carbonation. I also have had one or two batches where I have left 71B sitting on the lees for a couple of months and it did develop a really unpleasant funk to it. I can't explain the funk otherwise, it's not an off taste I can attribute to anything else.

And considering everything I've ever bottle carbed has had some yeast on the bottom of the bottle, I'm not hot on the idea of having that funk develop because of 71B when I've had such good results from K1V, I like the estery notes it leaves with apples and stuff I've bottled tends to sit around for a long time before it gets consumed.

Once or twice I've had problems with a batch being infected (I use wild unsprayed apples and make my own cider and don't always have time to sulphite it before I start fermenting it) and have had to sulphite batches I'd intended to carbonate, what I've done was sulphite it, leave it to settle out for a few weeks, rack it off any sediment that has collected since the sulphites, rehydrate a quarter of a packet of EC1118 or K1V1116 then add it to the batch along with the priming honey, mix and bottle. So if I were determined to use 71B for my fermentation, I'd sulphite it after it's fermented dry, give it a few days (at least 24 hours after sulphites before pitching another yeast) or a cold crashing, rack it off anything that's settled out, and pitch a bit of another yeast when priming and bottling.

As always, if you're bottle carbonating, you want to ferment things completely dry before you add priming honey and bottle it, otherwise as Mazer828 suggests, BOOM. The reason for this is you want to make sure ALL sugars are gone before you add priming sugar so that your yeast will only have the measured amount of priming sugar to use for carbonation and not also anything left over from an incomplete fermentation.

If you do use only 71B, I would highly suggest you aim at the lower end of its expected alcohol tolerance just so you know it's done and the yeast will still have a little tolerance left to make bubbles for you. And if you do pitch another yeast at the end of primary, make sure you let it finish fermenting anything left over by the 71B before you prime and bottle it. And I would recommend not aiming for the higher end of the second yeast's tolerance either, pitching it into a mostly finished must is going to be hard on it and it probably won't perform as well as it would have if it had started the fermentation in the first place. I don't know how successful it would be to kill off another yeast that's been going gangbusters, which is why I suggest sulphites (campden tablet) to help it along.