Yeast Shootout Finale: All 16 Yeasts vs 1 Mead Recipe

42 Comments

1. 🦝

2. I would be interested to know something about how far these bottles traveled and how long it took to get to all the other tasters. There seem to be too many variables here to take this serious at all. Evidently some of the bottles "leaked". Who knows why. I imagine they were shipped, so possibly exposing the bottles to temp swings, oxidation, agitation, and who knows what else. I know that the goal on YouTube is to create content but I think it would be cool to remove some of those variables and do one that was more controlled. Entertaining none the less.

3. Aww, you skipped 71B, which is the one I most wanted to hear your opinions on, because I'm not a huge fan of the batch I made with it. My D-47 batch is delicious and tastes like a professional wine, but the 71B batch has a weird taste of cherries, pine sap, and yeast.

4. I've gotten grape candy notes from a wild yeast hydromel I made once.

5. Some constructive feedback fkr when you upload your next iteration of this. This video was very challenging for me to track down as a reference, I was only able to find it because I knew it was out there. Not sure if tags or a different naming convention would help, but it was hurried under your other videos for the individual yeast shoot outs when searching.

6. I love how the colors are so different

7. Excellent video 👍 the difference in descriptions made for a winding road of pallets 😋
   Thanks and do it again, do it again 😁👍

8. I think I may have commented the other day. But I had to come back because I was eating corn tortilla chips. And I remembered there was like 4 where everyone described a distinct "corn tortilla flavor" and rated those meads at the bottom. If have a personal theory that it could have been inclusions in the honey rather than from the yeast and the yeast brought those flavors out (or rather left them unscathed). Though he did say 12 of the meads were made from 1 bucket of honey while 4 batches were made from the other. This other bucket of honey could contain honey that from a hive near a corn field (corn is a grass and is wind pollenated) or the bees could have actively gone to harvest sap from the stalks after the cornfields were combined, could have brought pollen from the corn as a high fiber filler for the bee bread, coukd have cmgone to "aquire some nectar" from aphids or some other insect that sucks sugars from a plant or could have found damaged or exposed ears of corn and gathered some of the sweet starchy goodness from the kernels.

   But that's not why I'm here. Everyone rated it nasty or lowly because eof the "corn tortilla taste"… dude! Add water to that shit with a lacto ferment culture for a dry sour style mead, let it go dry, oak it and you have yourself a low ABV "session whiskey style mead". Which would have unique honey characters as opposed to caramel notes which woukd typically come from the distilation process.
   It's not a bummer. It's a GRAND OPPORTUNITY! If only there was a way to introduce amylase enzymes or something equivalent like Aspergillius Oryzea (one of the bacterias used in the SCOBY for making Sake, Soju or Mijiu. It is easily harvested and cultivated from corn hosts because it naturally LOVES corn and is usually hand in hand with it) you could use a Koji-kin or simular culture to add to a mead with flaked corn or corn meal and make a sour mash mead with corn and honey.

   DOOOOOOD! The possibilities!

9. Great video, and useful. Was there a beard requirement for this?

10. I feel like I'm going to come back to this video many times. Very useful information

11. Quality of videos are improving a lot.

12. Thanks for information guy’s, very much appreciated 👍

13. I know you can't answer every question but I thought I would try. I have 3 new to me honey varieties that I am going to make s traditional with plus combine each with something. Macadamia blossom (floral notes), Monkey Pod (notes of lemon & vanilla) and Ulei Blossom (notes of butterscotch) I am trying to decide on yeast for each. I have K1V, 71b, and a Premier variety pack so one of each on hand but willing to order but not sure which to try. Any thoughts?

14. Goes to show once again that if you choose a different strain of yeast, you’ll get a different result. You can play up or play down the aroma of your ingredients depending on what yeast you use. The colour will be affected as well.

    I have this theory that the more enthusiastic your fermentation is, the more of the original flavour of your ingredients might be blown off as well. This can be solved in some cases by fermenting at a lower temp, but that means you have to be careful your yeast doesn’t get stressed either of you might get undesirable flavours… but it doesn’t hurt at times to take a wet towel and wrap it around your fermentation vessel in Summer if you don’t have airconditioning (which is the case in many homes in Europe). It’ll only lower the temp by a few degrees but it can help a lot.

    Love this video! Thank you!

    Edit: would you ever consider doing a side-by-side (as in: simultaneously brewed) yeast shoutout for these yeasts? A gigantic undertaking but it would be extremely interesting!

15. Damn, guess my mistake on my first mead was my yeast, I used the 1118. Will see how it will taste with the Honey I used, it’s a blueberry flower honey

16. What an incredible experiment dude. I've learned so much helpful info from your videos thanks bro.

17. Hey can u out use sani-t to sanitize

18. . Loving this channel really cool things your doing. Makes it easy to find inspiration for the next brew.

19. What an awesome test! Definitely going to use this as a reference!

20. Hey man do you plan on doing more braggots, I'm very interested in trying more braggot recipes but it seems theyre not very popular

21. Hahaha. I've gotta watch the video, but I'm not able to at the moment. This is great. I just got into mead making and the first thing we did after proof of concept was mix up 6 gallons of water, honey, and yeast nutrient and put it in 11 half gallon growlers then sprinkle yeast on each one to do a test of all 11 yeast varieties off the same batch. I hadn't heard of anyone else doing anything similar, but here you are. Nice.

22. What an amazing showdown on the different yeast variants. I love videos like this, I appreciate your work and content. Thank you!

23. Of course the yeast I’m fermenting with right now wasn’t in the group tested… 😀 I’ll give some of the top fours a shot.

24. Dang! Disappointed that ec118 didn't rank in the top four for anyone, as it's the only yeast I have… But now i know that if the brew tastes bland it's partly the fault of the yeast! I'll have to give one of the winners a try

25. MMM and BC sharing airpods is straight adorbs.

26. 69th upvote!

    Thanks for doing this kind of experiment. It's really helpful!

    Belle saisson is good for cider. Agree about QA23; I recently made a grape wine with it, and it's bitter. The bitterness does seem to be subsiding, but I will probably not use this yeast again.

27. I love this video and everyone in it!!! I imagine a LOT OF WORK went into this. thank you for putting in all the work and sharing!!!!

28. The grape candy flavor is probably methyl anthranilate. Ethyl acetate is also a common tasting note y’all came up with. It’s really cool how people perceived these meads. It was fun listening to this.

29. Great test. I agree pretty much with the final listing.

30. Ok this is incredibly helpful and wow what an awesome bundle of info to be able to have as a tool this is truly amazing thank you for these types of videos

31. This was fun to be a part of!!

32. YES!

33. Loved every second! Very much!

34. Fantastic work! Thanks for sharing. I will definitely investigate some of the yeasts that has been mentioned here. M05 is my favorite so far. Drops clear fast, preserves the honey aroma and flavours, ferments fast.
    Btw, it was me who corrected you for "Côte des blancs!" It is pronounced "cott dé blan" haha

35. Everyone has different taste, and this video just made me feel a lot more comfortable about choosing a yeast. I got QA23 because youve been using it, and I was excited to start brewing! However, I think when I run out, I wanna try something new and just gain experience. Thanks for the effort and awesome creator clash! Amazing video.

36. its pronounced as Coat-day-blon

37. Sure there's always haters, but I very much appreciated this video! Going to save it so I can reference back to it.

38. Would love to hear your opinions on voss kveik and lutra kveik.. we use them a lot here in Phoenix az as they like heat…

39. Great job on this huge undertaking. It’s interesting to see so many “beers yeasts” near the top. I’d love to see you do one of these experiments for kveik strains at a high fermenting temperature…

40. Really enjoyed this video, and all the great information. Thank you 🙏🏻

41. My favorite isn't even on there. 71b 🤣

42. But they are different ages… Lol 🤣
    Sounds like I need to try sundew, maybe for my strawberry I want to try making again.
    Also need to try the safeale one you all liked. Thanks for the great video, it takes real dedication for this long of a test! Thanks Matt, Carlos, Larry and BC.

    Wanted to add: K1-V1116, 212 and redstar premiere classique are my favorites.