HERB - stevia

[Niki Armanasco]

Magdalena,

I have successfully produced a couple of very sweet, very low alcohol meads using bread yeast.  I have a number of friends in the SCA who love the taste of mead but dont like much alcohol.

Using the bread yeast gives you fermentation but not at a very high level.  I found that using this type of yeast increased my brewing and settling time a little but the results were more than worth it.

I will look at home and see if I have the recipes written down somewhere but I believe I used a standard mead recipe and added extra honey.  I find that using the simmer and skim method with the honey and water helps speed up the settling process.

Yours

Morna of River Haven

>>> Magdalena <magdlena at earthlink.net> 01/11 4:14 pm >>>
"Walter J. Wakefield" wrote:

> If you are thinking of using stevia in place of a sugar in brewing, I
> don't think it would work - nothing really for the little yeasties to
> eat.  But I don't think it would interfere with the brewing process if
> there was a source of sugar.

My theory is that if I use some stevia and some sugar source, I could make a
relatively low alcohol wine or mead that is still semi-sweet.  In wine making,
if you want a sweet wine, you have to introduce enough sugar so that your yeast
will gobble away at the sugar and poison themselves with alcohol while still
leaving enough sugar to sweeten the wine.  I could kill the yeast with
chemicals, but I have friends who are allergic to sulfites, plus I dislike the
use of chemicals in my wine.  I could also theoretically kill the yeast by
heating my wine, but that can drive off aroma, change the color/flavor, and it
doesn't reliably work without boiling the wine.  Since I like my wine
semi-sweet, and I'm a lightweight, I'm looking at alternative methods.  The
stuff in my closet ranges from 12% to 23%, and I'd like to make something closer
to 8%.
    What I'm wondering is how the taste of stevia will change in interaction
with the fermentation process, and whether the alcohol extraction later in the
process will effect the taste as well.

-Magdalena


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