Published by Fangfang Zhang, edited by. George Hu.
26th May. 2023.
What is Hard Seltzer
Hard seltzer is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting sugar with yeast and yeast nutrients. Hard seltzer is the drink that is the popular beverage in young people now, because the consumers are looking for low calorie, low carbohydrate, and gluten-free beverages.
In some areas, seltzer is made with malt or some fruits. The primary ingredients in hard seltzer are water, fermentable sugar, yeast, and yeast nutrient. Nutrients are essential for making seltzer. The best yeasts for making seltzer are those yeast with neutral, clean flavor and good fermentation ability.
The process of making hard seltzer differs from beer, fruit and wine fermentations. There several challenges faced by seltzer makers. Hard seltzer is produced by pure sugar or malt base. Not like beer or wine fermentation, most seltzer bases are without nutrients or lack of nutrients, so we need to supplement with specific nutrition to help the fermentation to ferment sugar to alcohol.
Nutrients are essential
When making beer or wine, malt or grape contains nitrogen, minerals, vitamins that yeast need to convert sugar into alcohol. In hard seltzer making process, there is no nutrients to satisfy the needs of yeast, so you need to add nutrients to ensure that the yeast is in good healthy to turn all of sugar into alcohol.
Yeast requires different kinds of nutrients to growth and to ferment sugar to alcohol, such as nitrogen, minerals, vitamins, growth factors and survival factors. Hard seltzer fermentation is sugar-based ferment that is a desert of nutrients and need to supplement all kinds of nutrient required by yeast. Nitrogen is one of the important nutrients for alcoholic fermentation. Yeast assimilates nitrogen is important to synthesize proteins, enzymes and yeast cell structure. Most fermentation problems are caused by deficiency of assimilable nitrogen.
Angel Yeast developed a new nutrient product, Nutri-Seltzer. It is optimised for high gravity seltzer fermentations. Angel’s Nutri-Seltzer is designed with inorganic nitrogen, vitamins, minerals and buffers, that are essential nutrients required to build yeast biomass, specifically for high gravity seltzer fermentations. This combination is important to ensure a good fermentation kinetic and optimise the production of neutral flavor and aroma in seltzers.
Deficient nutrients will get unhappy yeast that leads to sluggish or stuck fermentation, low alcohol yield, and off-flavors. Angel Yeast focus on these demands in developing a nutrient product for hard seltzer to achieve neutral flavour and fast fermentation, and high alcohol.
Choose the right yeast
Yeast strains are different in tolerance of alcohol, temperature, and sugar, nutrient requirement, fermentation rate. There are many kinds of yeast that can use in hard seltzer, beer yeast, wine yeast, or distiller’s yeast. Angel provides a wide range of yeast products, like wine yeast (BV818, RV100, RV171, CEC01), beer yeast (American ale yeast A01, British beer yeast CY115, CN36, wheat beer yeast WA18, W008). Yeast is also important to get complete fermentation and good sensory. It depends on your choice, and we recommend using the yeast that ferments quickly with high attenuation and neutral flavor. For high gravity seltzer fermentation, we highly recommend the new yeast Seltzer HG, with high ethanol tolerance to 16-18%, especially for high gravity.
Deal with the drop of pH
During pure sugar fermentation, the pH drops quickly when yeast ferments as there is no buffer in pure sugar-based fermentation. Low pH will do a negative effect on fermentation. Nutri-Seltzer has pH buffers, so yeast has a well-balanced condition to growth and ferment. There is no need to add extra buffers during fermentation, when you add enough Nutri-Seltzer. This product is an ease use formula that you do not add any extra buffer when making seltzer.
There are different sugar-wort fermentation kinetics below without buffer, supplemented with Nutri-Seltzer depending on the fermentation conditions.
Get neutral flavor
Before fermentation, brewers need to know the conditions of fermentation, like sugar degree, the nutrient, and fermentation temperature, for successful fermentation. In seltzers, there are only sugar substrates like sucrose and dextrose, in which yeast cannot growth happily, healthy, and productively, so a complex nutrient need to be added.
The typically hard seltzer is neutral, and without sulfur like aromas. If you are in the trouble of off-flavor, you need to correct the yeast strain that you choose and yeast nutrient that you use.
High gravity fermentation
High gravity seltzers are difficult to ferment because of the pressure from high sugar and the hurt of the alcohol produced by yeast at the second half part of the fermentation. In high gravity wort, the dosage of yeast and nutrition need to increase. Our new product Nutri-Seltzer is the product formulated specifically to help you make a clean, dry and clear seltzer, and the yeast of Seltzer HG, with high ethanol tolerance to 16-18%, especially for high gravity.
About Angel Brewing：
Angel brewing focus on the brewing microbial resource industrialization and its industrialized application including global distilling spirit, wine, fermented condiment and global biofuel. The team of angel brewing experts provides brewing microbial products and fermentation solutions to global customers.
About Distilled Spirits and Biofuels Division:
Angel can provide brewing yeasts, ingredients and related technical services for the production of wine, beer, and other brewing liquor. All our products are natural, safe, and of high quality. With the current energy shortages around the world, the production of fuel ethanol through yeast fermentation has become an inevitable trend.
About Angel:
Angel Yeast Company is a high-tech listed company specializing in yeast and biotech. Product business covers Yeast and Baking, Yeast Extract-Savoury, Nutrition & Health and Biotechnology fields. It is one of the world's leading companies in the yeast industry. Angel has 12 holding subsidiaries and provides products and services for more than 150 countries and regions.
For more media information, please contact:
Angel Yeast Co., Ltd.
Yichang, Hubei, China
Ryan Wu
Tel.: +86 717 6353619
Email: wusy@angelyeast.com
en.angelyeast.com
