Can you make an alcoholic beverage with out using yeast?!
Previous answerers have stated that wine can be made without yeast. If so, perhaps they could give an explanation.
Wine is made by yeast converting sugars in the juice of grapes into alcohol.
You can use natural yeasts on the grapes and in the air, or kill them (with campden tablets or sulfur dioxide) and add cultivated yeasts.
Wine, beer, 'hard' cider, whatever -- yeast is used to create the alcohol. No yeast, no alcohol.
But there is no yeast left in comercially bottled wine, cider or most beers.
Answers: I am constantly amazed by the utterly wrong answers given here (and even more when they are picked as the best)
Previous answerers have stated that wine can be made without yeast. If so, perhaps they could give an explanation.
Wine is made by yeast converting sugars in the juice of grapes into alcohol.
You can use natural yeasts on the grapes and in the air, or kill them (with campden tablets or sulfur dioxide) and add cultivated yeasts.
Wine, beer, 'hard' cider, whatever -- yeast is used to create the alcohol. No yeast, no alcohol.
But there is no yeast left in comercially bottled wine, cider or most beers.
Sure. Hard cider, wine, most spirits.
there is a certain amount of Natural yeast on grapes and apples plumbs and any grains and hops etc ...that may provide for the conversion to alcohol without adding cultured yeast..
we have only been doing it for the last million years.
You can make a couple different things without adding yeast. Hard apple cider and wine are the most common. If you are using fresh fruit (not store bought juice), then when you crush and press the fruit, you will have some wild yeasts in the juice from the skins. Normally we use campden tablets to kill these bacteria off. But if you do not, and you use proper cleaning techniques for your equipment, the wild yeast will begin working.
Yes and no.
The bottom line is that yeast is what makes alcohol from fermentable sugars. Yeast is what makes beer, wine, cider, mead, you name the fermented beverage, into an alcoholic brew. Aside from rare, esoteric, non-yeast organisms and chemical processes carried out in labs, all alcohol is made by yeast.
However, if you don't *add* yeast, there is always the possibility of wild yeasts (either airborne or on the skin of the fruit/husk of the grain) getting established and making alcohol. Where wine and cider are cited as examples of not using yeast, that's not exactly accurate...yeast wasn't added, but was already present on the fruit.
Distilled spirits are made by disitilling fermented beverages. Distilling doesn't *make* alcohol, it merely concentrates already existing alcohol from wine (to make brandy) a sort of beer (to make whiskey), and so on. However, yeast and some form of fermentable sugars are required to make the alcohol to be distilled.
So, yes, you can make alcoholic beverages without *adding* any yeast, but no, alcoholic beverages cannot be made without any yeast at all.
Yes, yeast is just a natural bacteria/fungus that changes sugar into alcohol and CO2. Belgians have been continuing to ferment alcohol with airborne yeasts for years. You could ferment with a different bacteria or fungus. It just won't taste very good. At least to my specifications.