Bread Yeast question

[ulv0205]

Hello, everyone. I'm quite new at the hobby but I've been a long time lurker here in the forums. All the information and insight has been really helpful.
Anyway, I have been making some batches of mead using my local bread yeast (I'm from Colombia, hard to get anything else here) and some fermax I got my hands into. This particular time I tried to make a sweet traditional.
The recipe was:
2.5kg local wildflower honey
local spring water to 1.12 gravity (around 5 liters).
2 TBSP Dry bread yeast, rehidrated at 40ºc with 2 TBSP of brown sugar, let it sit for 20 minutes, swirling every 5 minutes or so.
2 TBSP Fermax at must creation, again at 1.08, and 1.03 (it went from 1.054 ish to 1.03 over night)
I got my hands into one of those aeration pumps for aquariums and used it to aerate and degas, did it dialy for 4 days (it hit 1.03 at 96 hr!!!!)
Checked ph constantly and it was consistently between 3.5 and 3.6
temp was 19ºC
By day 6 it hit had hit 1.01 gravity, it might be going bone dry (it's day 8 today)

I'm quite happy with the results, however it is more alcoholic than I planned it to be, I was hoping bread yeast would give up at 12% abv, 13% tops which is around what JAOM gets. (I planned the mead based on the JAOM recipe for the bread yeast tolerance)
My question is as follows: do you guys think it was too much feeding the yeast? too much yeast? or just my local bread yeast brand is incredibly resiliant and I should try some other brands?
Would beer brands crap out earlier? thanks in advance!

 

[Maylar]

I had Fleischman's bread yeast take my JAOM to 15%, following the recipe verbatim.

 

[Blackegg]

I followed the JAOM pretty much verbatim as well and have a secondary sitting at just over 15% ABV using just Fleischmanns standard bread yeast.

 

[bernardsmith]

I think the issue with bread yeast is not that it cannot ferment to 15 percent but that it is not developed to flocculate (gather and drop out of suspension) as well as wine yeasts. That means that it may simply remain in suspension in the mead. And that means that clearing the mead to end up with a bright and perfectly clear drink is going to be a challenge.
There may also be other issues associated with bread yeast. For example, that yeast has not been cultivated to either enhance or inhibit all the nuances of flavors that wine /beer yeasts can produce. You can think of this like the speakers on a sound system. Speakers that may be perfectly adequate to listen to the news or music in the background, but if you really wanted to hear every note from every instrument you may not want to listen on a $10 radio you bought at the local department store...

 

[Squatchy]

Hello, everyone. I'm quite new at the hobby but I've been a long time lurker here in the forums. All the information and insight has been really helpful.
Anyway, I have been making some batches of mead using my local bread yeast (I'm from Colombia, hard to get anything else here) and some fermax I got my hands into. This particular time I tried to make a sweet traditional.
The recipe was:
2.5kg local wildflower honey
local spring water to 1.12 gravity (around 5 liters).
2 TBSP Dry bread yeast, rehidrated at 40ºc with 2 TBSP of brown sugar, let it sit for 20 minutes, swirling every 5 minutes or so.
2 TBSP Fermax at must creation, again at 1.08, and 1.03 (it went from 1.054 ish to 1.03 over night)
I got my hands into one of those aeration pumps for aquariums and used it to aerate and degas, did it dialy for 4 days (it hit 1.03 at 96 hr!!!!)
Checked ph constantly and it was consistently between 3.5 and 3.6
temp was 19ºC
By day 6 it hit had hit 1.01 gravity, it might be going bone dry (it's day 8 today)

I'm quite happy with the results, however it is more alcoholic than I planned it to be, I was hoping bread yeast would give up at 12% abv, 13% tops which is around what JAOM gets. (I planned the mead based on the JAOM recipe for the bread yeast tolerance)
My question is as follows: do you guys think it was too much feeding the yeast? too much yeast? or just my local bread yeast brand is incredibly resiliant and I should try some other brands?
Would beer brands crap out earlier? thanks in advance!

I hope you added the sugar after your yeast was rehydrated. If not your wounding the yeast.

 

[ulv0205]

Squatchy: I actually added it as part of the rehydration process, won't do it again.

Thanks everyone for the responses, I see now that bread yeast can go quite high. I'll try to get some beer yeast and see how it performs in my quest to relatively low abv and high residual sugar.

 

[Medsen Fey]

There is some data showing that a modest amount of sugar won't do any harm to yeast during rehydration so I wouldn't be overly concerned.

 

[bernardsmith]

Squatchy: I actually added it as part of the rehydration process, won't do it again.

Thanks everyone for the responses, I see now that bread yeast can go quite high. I'll try to get some beer yeast and see how it performs in my quest to relatively low abv and high residual sugar.

Others may disagree , but one challenge with honey is that all the flavor is in the honey - but so are all the fermentables. That means the less honey you use in the must and so the lower the starting gravity and so the lower the final ABV , then the less flavor you have in the mead (the more honey per gallon of mead the more flavor - but the more flavor the higher the potential ABV)

Strikes me that there are a few solutions to the problem of lower alcohol and so less flavor
1. You use flavor rich honeys - tupelo, meadowfoam, orange blossom and the like, or honeys from earlier in the season; and /or.
2. You add flavor: - spices, hops, flowers, fruit

Rather than choose yeasts that are unable to ferment your mead dry an alternative method is to use the yeast most suited for the mead you wish to make and then allow that yeast to convert every last molecule of sugar that it can. You then allow the mead to age out and so remove all the straggling yeast cells through regular racking and perhaps cold crashing (as brewers call it) , then you stabilize the mead by adding K-meta and K-sorbate so that any cells still lurking cannot actively ferment any sugar and then you backsweeten the mead by adding more honey, or blending it with a sweet mead , or ... or ... Bottom line - you have complete (COMPLETE) control over the final sweetness..