BeerBorg

Anyone use this much? It's for a sparkling wine but I used it for hard cider. How far has it gone down for ya? I'm hoping it gets close to 1.000, but with a starting OG of 1.120, got my doubts. I am surprised that after 4 hours it is bubbling like crazy out the bubbler, might need to rethink that and put a blow-off tube in the carboys... I bet it blows out by morning. Any advice from experienced 1118 users? I used a whole pack in each carboy (1-gallon ea), did the rehydrating like it said for 15 minutes prior to pitching.

I bought some to make cider, but I haven't used any yet. Cheaper than ale yeast.

I was able to get a gallon of cider + 1 cup of brown sugar down to 1.000 using the MB gold yeast packs.

Did you add any other fermentables in the cider?

I don't use brown sugar, I use 2 lbs table sugar to 2.25 gallons of cider. See'n how I ended up with less than 2 gallons after the boil, I'm worried that I used way too much sugar... might be a little alc. hot... LOL, we will see. I also used 3 tsp of pumpkin pie spice. Nothing else.

I've used it a few times to make hard lemonades and hard iced teas -- never got any krausen from it. It just kinda bubbles/fizzes, at it's own pace, and takes quite a while to finish. I usually let it go for 6-8 weeks.
For me, it finished anywhere between 1.006 and 1.012, mostly around 1.010. But I start pretty high - my hard lemonades are up around 8-9% ABV.

Crazy Climber wrote:I've used it a few times to make hard lemonades and hard iced teas -- never got any krausen from it. It just kinda bubbles/fizzes, at it's own pace, and takes quite a while to finish. I usually let it go for 6-8 weeks.
For me, it finished anywhere between 1.006 and 1.012, mostly around 1.010. But I start pretty high - my hard lemonades are up around 8-9% ABV.

Cool. It's bubbling slowly, has not took off like a rocket, hope it doesn't. I can let it run a long while if need be, it's in a room that holds a steady 68 degrees. I do have krausen now, bout 2 inches thick. I may let it run for 4-6 weeks then drop in some champagne yeast to take it on down. Think that would work? That all depends on how sweet it turns out towards the end, I don't want it real sweet, but I want some sweetness.

Lalvin 1118 is a Champagne yeast. It can tolerate up to 18% alcohol, so it should take your apple wine pretty much completely dry. I noticed you mentioned a boil - why in the world would you boil apple juice?

russki wrote:Lalvin 1118 is a Champagne yeast. It can tolerate up to 18% alcohol, so it should take your apple wine pretty much completely dry. I noticed you mentioned a boil - why in the world would you boil apple juice?

Well.... mainly because I forgot I had it. This was leftover cider from when I made my apple juice/jam/sauce last month. This sat in the fridge in the garage for quite a while and I was afraid it might have picked up a bug or 2 sitting in there for so long, so I did it to make sure no bugs lived.

I thought this was a champagne yeast but the package said it was a sparkling wine. Same thing I guess. I hope it takes it way down, but it won't be totally dry, I put 4 oz of lactose in the batch. If it takes it down to 1.000 like the last cider I made, this will be close to the limits of the % this yeast is rated for. Will be a sip'n cider for sure. I'm thinkin warm this up on the stove, soak in some mulling spices, it will make one heck of a winter night warmer upper!

Forgot to add, the krausen has stayed about 1 inch thick on top now, bubbling pretty slow so I think it won't give me a major blow-over like I was expecting. That's a good thing.

I've used the 1118 once recently for cider.
I used 1/2 pack for a 2.5 Gallon LBK and it finished just fine for me.... I'm sure the amount you used should take it all the way down.

Guess I can't help myself. Cheap "and" thrifty since I grew up in the latter part of the Great Depression.
I'd used other wine and champagne yeast and I'm sure it says 1 gram per gallon, but it's been a while and I don't remember.

I've used EC-1118 for a few meads.

It chews through simple sugars at an amazing rate. Due to some miscalculations I made a very, very sweet mead that had an OG of 1.19 and finished at 1.015 for about 23.5% ABV. After 4 days when it started to slow down it was at 1.05 but it slowly creeped the rest of the way down. I was using yeast nutrients with a staggered addition which may have helped. My less powerful meads and the cider I did finished around .992 when using EC-1118 so I would suspect yours should finish fairly dry.

My warning with EC-1118 is that since it ferments so fast it can really crank the temperature up inside the fermenter. With the big mead it was running 15f warmer inside than ambient temperatures. With the smaller ones it seemed to stay much closer to ambient.

So far the fermentation is in low gear so I suspect it's not going to go crazy. I'm thinking like u said, put in some yeast nutrients every 4-5 days to keep it steady and awake. I used a whole pack in each gallon carboy so I know there's plenty of yeast in each one, probably why it was bubbling withing a few short hours.

I should clarify - when I said it usually finishes around 1.010 for me, it was because I had put a pound or so of lactose in, for sweetening.

Last time I used it, I added a package of Coopers-MB Downunda yeast to help finish the job and take care of carbonating.

All of the hard fruity and/or tea drinks that I made with 1118 were very well-received, FWIW.