What kind of experimenting should home winemakers try to find the right strain?
I am more of a “Lallemand” winemaker but other yeast suppliers also make excellent strains that are worth experimenting with in fruit winemaking. The main method of experimentation is by doing smaller scale “bench” trials before deciding on a yeast strain to use and making larger quantities of wine with it. The easiest way to experiment this way is to simply split a particular batch of wine into two, three or four smaller batches and inoculate with different yeast strains. After a wine is fermented, finned and filtered, the wines are then evaluated on a standard 20-point judging system (color, aroma, taste and finish), very much it is done in wine competitions. Obviously the “winner” indicated which yeast strain produced a better wine. It is amazing how obviously different the wines can be! Are there any problems or mistakes home winemakers should look out for when choosing a yeast strain for fruit wines? Most winemakers don’t give a thought to using a different wine yeast stain with t
