EC-1118B Lalvin Yeast

I used half this package to ferment 7 gallons of apple cider into 8 % alcohol. It worked perfectly and with complete abandon and disregard for time or temperature... however, the process was complete. I have now added vinegar bacteria and mother to the alcohol and am converting the same to apple cider vinegar (with the help of my little bacter friends). It's from Canada...nothing bad ever comes out of Canada!

I seem to push my fermenting to the highest it can go & this yeast has proven its self over & over. Excellent quality yeast & nice price to.

First time using yeast to make hard cider. Ued too much first time, Brew way yeasty and very dry but I drank it anyway and it carries a punch. Bought WTEAST specifically designed for Hard Cider. It flopped miserably and I am redoing it using the LALVIN EC1118. The brew is bubbeling along quiet well with added nutriants and additional sugar. As for me and my house I will stay with LALVIN EC1118 because it works, or at least so far it does. I make my batches in one gallong containers. Large batching just dosen't work for me for some reason and brewers cant seem to tell me why. I believe the WYEAST was bad. I will try white labs for cider in the future to see how it does, but LALVIN ec 1118 seems to work o.k. Experimentation will reveal the truth. I use 1.5 grams per gallon with 8 tablespoons of bakers super refined sugar. I use to wild ferment and that never gave any punch, just made it bubbely. Just remember when you get a finished product it will not taste like apple cider but more like a dry wine. I will continue to keep LALVIN on hand as a back up or as a permanent starter.

Just started making wine, so I'm no expert in different yeasts. I did some homework and saw this as being one of the most versatile, so I bought a few of these. From the description it seemed as if it said this one is one of the better ones for fermenting well in a wider temperature range. I'm in Phoenix and my house is sometimes 80 already, so I thought this would be a better choice. AT this point, it's going to be too hot to do any more fermenting (optimal fermentation temperature is 70 to 75 Fahrenheit). I used this to make an apple wine. I added enough sugar to make the apple wine a little more then 12% Alcohol. I thought, well this is a comprise from what I see with many whites and many of my reds are more then 13% and sometimes more then 14%. Well, I learned something. Don't do that. My apple wine tastes like alcohol now and not apple wine. It's not that it's too dry or sweet or anything like that. It tastes like alcohol. I remember looking at an apple wine being sold and I think it was like 9%, so I should have noted this as a common standard and made this a 10%. OH well, that's what we do as new wine makers. Make mistakes and learn. As far as I know, Lavlin is very popular wine making yeast and my mistake was due to feeding the yeast too much sugar! Oh, it ate it, so it works. It's fun to watch the beginning states of fermentation. That stuff is alive. It's like little sea monkeys eating the sugar and making alcohol. AS any type of yeast from Lavlin or any other brand, it's probably smart to consider suggestions from the maker. I decided on the EC-1118 for what I was doing (i.e., two week fermentation, a white or fruit wine). If you want a longer fermentation, they may suggest one of their other strains.

I have limited experience making my own brew. But this yeast has worked well for me making hard apple cider that I enjoy. Keeps well when kept refrigerated. I hydrate about 1/3 of the package to add to ~2 gallons of apple juice. I reseal the package by double folding and refrigerating.

This yeast will ferment lots of sugar to make completely dry, high alcohol cider! Activates reliably. Imparts relatively little yeasty flavor. Let your cider age for a few months in a cool space, and you'll have some nice cider.

People complaining about the price are missing the point. This is on Prime (at least when I’m writing this), which means it will show up at your door within a day or two. And if you buy the larger quantity, the price break is significant. Just don’t buy one packet (who buys a single packet of yeast anyway?). This strain is a monster. I pitched it the day before I lost power for 55 straight hours in the recent Texas ice storm with single digit temps outside, and my inside ambient got down to 34 degrees. These little dudes were sitting there bubbling away in my simple mead the whole time, and went nuts when the heat came back on. Haven’t quite finished fermenting yet, but I got high hopes. Going to order more and do a 5 gallon batch.

We use this for making apple wine. we bottle in 12 oz beer bottles with a little bit of priming sugar. This yeast is fairly fast, it is clean tasting and doesn't impart much to the flavor, and lasts in a fridge for a while.