Although people have known how to make homemade wine for thousands of years (even back to the times of the ancient Egyptians), it was only in the 1850s that people realized that yeast was instrumental at inducing wine fermentation. This was because scientific researcher Louis Pasteur of France theorized that a living organism causes wine fermentation.

Though in the past people could remain blissfully ignorant of the use of yeast in wine fermentation, modern day vintners are used to the idea of using the correct yeast with their wine making equipment.

Why You Need to Use Yeast At All

Yeast is necessary so that the sugars in your wine blend (which may be composed of fruit juice sugars and additional sugar) can be processed into alcohol. Alcohol is a by-product of yeast consumption of sugar. But not all the yeast around us is good for wine making - that is why in the ancient years of wine making history, wines could turn out badly (even becoming vinegar) because people were not aware of the role yeast plays in wine fermentation. Back then, vintners had to hope their wine would not become hazy, cloudy stuff that wine patrons would refuse to drink, or simply become useless vinegar and waste their investment in the wine making process.

There is a difference between wild yeast and vintner's yeast. Wild yeast exists everywhere in the atmosphere - you could even be breathing in yeast right now without being aware of it. There may be yeast in this wild yeast population that can be suitable for making wine, but there may also be harmful yeast as well that can wreck our wine. To get around this problem of unknowingly using bad yeast, modern research into yeast has created the isolated strains of good yeast which can then be packaged and sold for wine making.

How to Make Homemade Wine with Vintner's Yeast

When you have pure good yeast like vintner's yeast available, you can simplify the wine making process so that you wind up with less waste and more good wine to enjoy, give away and sell. Now, a home brewer can sterilize his produce or fruit juices to kill off the wild yeast that has been growing in it, and then add in the modern day vintner's yeast once a sterilized wine making solution has been created. As a modern-day vintner, vintner's yeast lets you make the most of each batch of wine making ingredients you buy and prepare and even achieve zero wastage of wine. You have better odds for creating a hospitable wine making solution that will turn into great wine if you use vintner's yeast the right way.

To use vintner's yeast correctly, you can use one Campden tablet to sterilize every gallon of fruit or produce juice you prepare first. You have to dissolve the crushed tablet in the juice so that the Campden tablet will create sulfur gases - these sulfur gases are responsible for sterilizing your juice for you. Over 24 hours, the sulfur gases will eventually evaporate into the air. Once all the sulfur gases have evaporated, you can safely add your vintner's yeast into the wine to start the fermentation process.

Why Other Yeast Cannot Be Used for Winemaking

Some people claim that other types of yeast can also be used for winemaking, such as baker's yeast for one. One source even says that ordinary moldy bread can give you enough yeast to induce wine fermentation too. But there are problems with using these other types of yeast for wine making.

Baker's yeast can indeed be used for wine making but it will create a different taste for your final product compared to if you used vintner's yeast. And using moldy bread is a hit-and-miss option that most vintners do not advocate at all (probably because moldy bread may contain harmful yeast as well.)

In the end, vintner's yeast is the best type of yeast to use for making commercial or homebrewed wines. This is because research has been done as to whether that strain of yeast can produce good wine for you on a consistent regular basis, if the yeast used in the vintner's yeast product has any side effects on your wine, and gives you quality results that hit-and-miss or trial-and-error attempts may not. You save money by using vintner's yeast alone (unless you have enough money to see how other types of yeast will work in wine making.)

Bear in mind too that just because one type of yeast will produce an alcoholic beverage out of produce juice, the alcoholic beverage may not necessarily be wine. This means you should not use beer making yeast for making wine because the results will be different from what you want to achieve.

There are also specific vintner's yeasts that have been made to create a specific variety of wine, with notable flavor, notes, body and character that distinguish that type of wine. So you may have to be specific at identifying which vintner's yeast you need for your wine making recipe to create your preferred type of wine. So use one type of vintner's yeast to make light and fruity wine and another type of vintner's yeast to make red, full-bodied wine. Vintner's yeast can do this by producing a different degree of alcohol depending on which type of vintner's yeast is used for what type of juice. The results will be better for you and you avoid being disappointed by your wine making effort if you use vintner's yeast correctly then.

Using Yeast Nutrient to Egg On Your Fermentation Process

Yeast nutrient will feed more nitrogen (in phosphate form) to your vintner's yeast once it is in the fermenting wine. When sufficient nitrogen is present in your wine making solution, you can get the yeast you added to reproduce more enthusiastically, thus causing more fermentation to occur. This hastens the wine making process considerably for you.

Remember, vintner's yeast is your friend in wine making provided you use it well. With vintner's yeast on the job, it gets easier to make quality wine you can enjoy yourself or give away to friends and family that you can be proud of.

For more free articles on how to make homemade wine please visit the author's websites: Wine Making Equipment and How to Make Homemade Wine

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