In article >,
"Dave West" > wrote:
> Actually in the question i was wondering more what would be the maximum
> sugar level bakers yeast could tolerate, when adding all the sugar *at one
> go*. (rather than adding it in stages). Any idea on that one please ?

Right, now you sound suspiciously trollish. You're making 5% but your
wondering how high it can go...Feel free to experiment. 10% is no big
deal. Not an experiment I care to run - results may vary with the brand,
and also the lot, of baking yeast, since it's not selected for alcohol
tolerance particularly, so it will probably vary from lot to lot. 12% or
so is generally a safe bet for the low end for almost any yeast, with
adequate time. Take a bunch of clean half-litre or litre bottles, load
them up with varying amounts of sugar, inoculate with yeast, cover the
tops, come back and measure in a few months. The highest ones will take
a long time to finish.

> Also since i would only want to go up to say 5% by volume of alcohol at the
> most, is there any advantage in paying more for a wine yeast as opposed to a
> bakers yeast ? Would there for instance be any difference in the taste of
> the final product?

Yes, otherwise there would not be 50 or more easy to find and hundreds
slightly less easy to find varieties of beer (ale & lager) and wine
yeasts. Bread yeast is more or less like a mongrel dog - all it's
selected for is the ability to eat sugar and generate carbon dioxide.
Ale, Lager and Wine yeasts are all selected for flavor produced -
alcohol tolerance, when it is even a factor, is secondary. They also eat
sugar and produce carbon dioxide, but that's not what they are selected
for. The oddballs that have been selected first for high alcohol
tolerance (25%+) for the home-distilling and fuel-ethanol crowd are
generally reported to produce a vile-tasting product (which doesn't
matter so much if all that is being done is to get the alcohol out of it
with a still.)

For 3-7% work at room or warmish cellar temperatures, I tend to choose
ale yeast. It often doesn't cost any more than bread yeast, and the
ingredients cost far more than the yeast. If you are feeling
particularly parsimonious, you can re-use the same yeast for several
batches, if you are careful about sanitation. If you have a cold cellar,
lager is good.

If you're really, really cheap, you can just toss in some unwashed
grapes (with stems and all is better) or apples and play natural yeast
lottery with them. People sometimes get great results, other times not
so great - that's why there is a fermentation yeast industry for more
predictable results...

--
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Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.