Wine Yeast
To begin making homemade wine, you'll need fruit, sugar, water, and wine making yeast. Yeast for wine making comes in sachets, typically weighing 9-11 grams, sufficient for fermenting 5-6 gallons of wine. Popular brands include Lalvin, Red Star, and Mangrove Jacks. It's crucial not to substitute bread yeast for wine makers yeast; older recipes before 1975 might suggest using bread yeast, yeast cake, or even "Red Star" due to the limited availability of specialized wine yeast back then.
Today, however, wine making yeast is readily available for home winemakers, offering numerous strains to meet various winemaking needs. Crafted Bottler's top yeast recommendations include Lalvin K1-V1116, which is ideal for fruit wines and Concord or Niagara grapes, Lalvin EC-1118 known as a robust fermenter and an excellent general choice for fresh grape juice and high-gravity wines, Mangrove Jacks M05 & M02 as customer favorites for home mead and cider production, and 71B-1122 and ICV D-47, which are well-suited for meads and white wines.
