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I am trying a little experiment with a gallon jug of apple juice using turbo yeast and letting it ferment for 48 hours. Watcha think I'll get? Will the Turbo yeast nutrients be overload and affect the taste? I figger I can always strip out the ethanol if it's just aweful. Will let y'all know.

Ginzo let us know how it turns out, i was thinking about this for making a quick drinking table wine, fastest yeast iv used for wine previously has been 5-7 days and it didnt leave any off tastes but it was part of a kit.

I do plan to bottle this stuff for a year if it is any good. I might same a bottle of the turbo stuff for a quick table wine, though. Will keep yuou posted.

wine making is such a long process.....if you do it right, and let it age properly in between rackings, and let it settle, etc,etc.....

I just feel it would be a waste of money... I let my wines ferment for AT LEAST a month, then I let them settle for at least a month before my first racking. So by the time it is ready to bottle almost a year has gone by, so cutting the fermentation time down would kinda be pointless.

Also I have heard that Turbos give you a horrible tasting wine, and take longer to clear than a regular yeast anyway.

Brett wrote:Ginzo let us know how it turns out, i was thinking about this for making a quick drinking table wine, fastest yeast iv used for wine previously has been 5-7 days and it didnt leave any off tastes but it was part of a kit.

You can contact Woodstick Wines in Ontario, Canada to obtain this "7 Day Wine Kit Upgrade". It's a new product that is taking wine industry by storm. You'll find Betty at http://www.woodstick-wines.ca" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow.

Hope this helps!

YIKES! I would never think of using a trubo yeast, at least none of the ones I use, theyre 130gram packages, regular wine yeast is maybe a 5 gram package, I can only imagine it would taste horrible. Ive thought about it myself but ive tasted the sugar/turboyeast/water mash I make and its VERY cloudy and yeasty. I'd say try it as an experiment with NO expectations other than learning.

Brett wrote: i was thinking about this for making a quick drinking table wine.

How about a plain 14%vol sugar wash and cut it 50/50 with fruit juice?


AfricaUnite, have you tried the Turbo Pure 24hr? I have to hide my cleared wash as some visiting friends keep asking for my 'alcoholic water', it has no taste at all.

I made my turbo wine last winter and just strted opening it after aging 6 months. The taste isn't terrible. Maybe a little acidy. IT cleared up just fine though.

I can't imagine that you're gonna get anything better than swill. making wine is not a fast and messy process. It needs to mature, settle. If you're going to drink it even a month or two after making it (not to mention, a couple of days), you're not going to be drinking what it could be.

Ive made some wines that were absolutley terrible a month into secondary fermentation (first racking), that became barely drinkable at the third racking, and were absolutely wonderful at bottling (one year after primary). I can't wait to taste them after 1 year and more of aging...

Wine can't be hurried.

Aidas

aidas i have 5 gallons of rose 7 day table wine that everyone loves, it was a kit, not as good as a pure ingredient slow ferment but it makes for a great drinkable every day table wine, most my wines take up to a month or so in fermenting and many of them taste just fine without aging for example the apple and blackberry wine dissapeared within weeks (apart from the bottle i hid) granted the flavour has improved with age, but the unaged wine had a more fruity refreshing taste to it. Not all wines must be aged to be good and some 7 day wines taste fine as a table wine.

I'm not saying that you can't make something drinkable in a short period of time. Hell, I make a simple Lithuanian bread brew (water, dark rye bread, sugar and bakers yeast with some raisins thrown in) that's ready to drink in 2 days -- refreshing with a slight buzz-inducement.

What I'm saying is that when you hurry wine, you're not drinking its full potential. Natural stabilization and clearing make for a better drink than using finers or filters. Besides, you kill the romance of it all. I know, I know, sounds sappy... but that's how I got into the whole hobby -- I thought it was a romantic idea to make my own. I was right. True, I think there's a bit of snob in every home winemaker (not in the same sense as those who dish out 200-300 Euro for a "label" red from Bordeaux, simply because it's from Pauillac, Bordeaux, notwithstanding that it was a bad year and the winemaker doesn't even have a vineyard, but just buys grapes grown by someone else), but snobbish in the sense that there's a feeling that wine should be crafted, not manufactured. If I was looking for an easy drink, I'd take the cheaper way out -- buy a simple and cheap italian table white -- one Euro per liter, and perfectly drinkable.

That said -- if you like a quickly made wine, go for it. Whatever floats your boat. I just think that you're losing out on the more romantic aspect of making your own.

Aidas

Well, I used the turbo yeast in the apple must and it didn't come out half bad. I could have let the stuff clear a little better and it does have a bit of a yeasty taste to it. This is after letting it age since Nov - almost 6 months. If you ever need a strong wine in a hurry, this isn't a bad way to do it.

This is just my opinion, useing a turbo for making wine is not a good idea it's to fast of a ferment, but you can do what. When you are fermenting wine (for brandy or drinking)- it is best to use 2 grams of dry yeast per gallon and no more (two of the five gram packets per 5gal/20L batch). It's true that you would think to use 4 grams per gallon since the alcohol is so high (typically 10% or more)- but, with wine, in order to preserve the delicate aroma of the fruit you are fermenting, you need to have a slow, cool (60-70F) ferment to prevent the CO2 from driving off all of the more delicate flavors. A fast ferment in a wine will find the CO2 "scrubbing" the delicate flavors out, leaving you with a bland acidic wine that tastes pretty rough.

That is a good point about the CO2 MyDBear.

I know this comment will wrankle some folks, But I hate EC-1118. Lavin makes other strains that seem ok,l but I got so much off flavors from using the REDSTAR CHAMPAGNE that I won't use it. I got some nice wines out of the redstar (?bordeaux?) that I liked. EC-1118 produced bananna odors that I didn't put in there, and I found them gross.

One thing that good wine requires is time. Things can be speeded up a little, but wine is a long term production.

my turbo wash smells right now also to bananas, wich I didn't add. I think it's an ester: isoamyl acetate. (from vinegar)

I used to use red star champagne yeast, but now I just use red star active dry bakers yeast for just about everything. I get less off flavors with it.

pothead wrote:I used to use red star champagne yeast, but now I just use red star active dry bakers yeast for just about everything. I get less off flavors with it.

Same here. I did multiple washes with EC 1118 and didn't like the results. I just use active dry bakers now. My rum batches are noticably better tasting with the bakers yeast.

I think the problem with EC-1118 in simple washes is that it's a champagne yeast. It's specifically cultivated (is that the right word with a yeast) for a process that involves fermenting in multiple stages with extra sugar left at the end to build the carbonation. I bet it's great if you want to make something more complex, but for simpler washes, it lingers too long. Plus which, it's got a really high alcohol tolerance, so it tends to ferment out really dry. This is what I've discovered in my mead-making.

Update: Lalvin calls EC-1118 a "prise de mousse" yeast. The term refers to adding a solution of extra sugar and yeast to an already fermented wine to slowly build carbonation. This makes me believe that EC-1118 isn't meant to be a fast fermenter at all, but a slow one. Its high alcohol tolerance is probably due to the fact that it's meant to ferment sugars added to an already fermented wine.

Howdy,
The way I see it,Turbos are engineered to produce alcohol out of sugar and water.Now,because water has a ph-setting of around 7,there is lots of acid added to the yeast by the manufacturer,to achieve a fermentation-friendly environment of between ph-3 to ph-4.To give the yeast any food in a sugar water environment,LOTS of yeast nutrients are also added.
Now you add this yeast to fruit,which has its own acidity and usually has some amount of yeast nutients,both of these are way out of proportion.
This is why fruit ferments using Turbo usually taste very sour/acidy.
To boot,the yeasts alc tolerance is very high,so usually all sugar is fermented leaving your mash with no sugar ,lots of acid and lots of alcohol.
Added to that comes a violent fermentation to drive off the last surviving aromas;what you got left is nothing at all that can be called a good wine.
I do believe that Turbos have their place of use--wine making is definitely not what they're designed to do.
Cheers
hf