Making beer with wine yeast?

[Mookie]

Hello people,

I got lots of wine yeast, will they be suitable for beer too?
thinking about my first beer using malt powder and the wine yeast.
Will it work? Anyone tried that before? How will the beer come out?

Thanks

[rangaz]

yeast strain is very important when making beer as it has a huge impact on the final flavour. You will also need some hops to boil with the malt powder. It will most likely make something resembling beer rather than beer. Here beer yeast can be had for about $5 AUD a pack and can be reused 50 or more times, so less than 10c a brew.

[King Of Hearts]

Try a small batch and let us know. My guess is it would be more like a Belgian if the gravity is in the 6-9% range. You can use up to 25% sugar with the malt for that style.

[myerfire]

A beer brewing friend of mine wanted to make a beer with a higher ABV. I suggested useing a wine yeast, but when he went to the local brew shop, they advised against it, as the wine yeast would really change the flavor of the beer.
myerfire

[Mookie]

Thank you for all the replies.
Conclusion:
DON'T DO IT!
I fermented 48 Liters of wort with wine yeast.
The wine yeast I used did a great job on my Cabarnet Souvinion so the yeast are very good quality.
However on beer it tastes AWFUL!
I made the intended 5% alcohol in about 2.5 days and until the yeast settled down in the bottom, the taste of the "beer" was very acidic and smells bad.
I am fermenting stuff for about 4 years, and I did good sanitation, and this is the first batch ever I have to throw away.
So it must be the yeast..

[rangaz]

just out of curiosity, what was the process you used and which hops did you use?

[Mookie]

I bought organic hop flowers, they were dried a bit but still green and full with aroma.
I bought two kinds of malt powder and mixed them, boiled them with the hops, cooled down and added water into my fermenting bucket, fixed the sg levels to 5% alcohol potential, woke up the yeast with warm water and some wort, added them at 25c. they bubbled great and fast for 2-3 days and I got the 5% alcohol, the taste was "ok", a bit sour and I thought that when the yeast will settle it will get better (like with wine), so i had to wait another 3-4 days for the yeast to settle down, until then the taste became awful.