The strain decides more than the recipe.
Same honey, same fruit, same water — change the yeast and you get a different drink. Tell the picker what you are making, how strong you want it, and how cold the room actually gets in February.
10STRAINS · MEAD / WINE / CIDER / BEER · STOCKED IN LITHUANIA
Ten strains, and what each one refuses to do.
A strain is really a set of limits: how much alcohol it tolerates before it gives up, and how warm or cold it will still work. Everything after that is preference.
The widest and the strangest
EC-1118 works from 10°C to 30°C and up to 18%ABV. It will finish almost anything, and it tastes of almost nothing — which is the point.
Voss Kveik is the opposite argument: it wants 25–40°C, ferments a beer out in two days, and leaves an orange note behind. No temperature control is not a problem for it. The other eight sit between those two.
| Strain | Best for | ABV tolerance | Working range | Character |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lalvin EC-1118 | Mead, wine, cider, restarts | 18%ABV | 10–30°C | Neutral and hard to stop. Ferments bone dry and lets the ingredients speak. |
| Lalvin 71B | Melomels, fruit wine | 14%ABV | 15–30°C | Softens harsh acid and keeps fruit forward. Drinkable young. |
| Lalvin ICV D47 | Traditional mead, whites | 14%ABV | 15–20°C | Full mouthfeel, honey character kept. Run it warm and it throws fusel heat. |
| Lalvin K1-V1116 | Country wines, stuck ferments | 18%ABV | 10–35°C | The survivor. Handles swings, restarts what has stopped, lifts fresh fruit aroma. |
| Lalvin QA23 | Crisp cider, white-style wine | 16%ABV | 14–20°C | Aromatic, low nutrient demand, finishes clean and thirst-quenching. |
| Fermentis SafCider | Cider | 12%ABV | 10–25°C | Built for apples. Works at cellar temperature and drops clear quickly. |
| Fermentis SafAle US-05 | Pale ale, IPA | 11%ABV | 15–22°C | The clean American workhorse. Neutral, so hops and malt carry the beer. |
| Fermentis SafAle S-04 | Bitter, stout, English pales | 9.5%ABV | 15–20°C | Fast English ale strain. Light fruity esters, then it drops brilliantly clear. |
| Fermentis SafLager W-34/70 | Lager | 9%ABV | 9–15°C | Clean and crisp, but it needs a genuinely cold room for weeks, not days. |
| Lallemand Voss Kveik | Ale without temperature control | 12%ABV | 25–40°C | Norwegian farmhouse strain. Done in two days, orange-citrus note, unbothered by heat. |
Lithuanian homebrew shops that carry most of this list: Savas alus ↗ · Alaus detalės ↗ · Aludaris ↗. We are not affiliated with any of them and earn nothing if you buy there — they are simply where the sachets in my drawer came from. Stock moves, so check before you plan a recipe around one strain.
What these strains did in this garage.
The packet tells you what a strain can do. This tells you what actually came of it here — batch number, how it ended, and how strong it got.
LALVIN 71B · 3 BATCHES
- №29 Banana Mead bottled · 12.1%
- №14.1 Strawberry Cider poured away · 2.9%
- №14 Strawberry Cider bottled · 2.9%
BIOVIN RC 212 · 1 BATCH
- №33 Pineapple Wine still aging · 12.1%
LALVIN. BOURGOVIN RC 212 · 1 BATCH
- №28 Red seedless grape Wine bottled · 0.8%
The other 19 published batches do not record which strain went in. Those are the ones that cannot answer this question, and no guess is made for them.
Kombucha and tepache do not come in a packet.
Pick kombucha or tepache in the picker above and it will refuse to name a strain. That is not a gap in the list. These ferments run on a living culture you keep alive between batches, or on the yeast already sitting on the fruit, and a dry sachet has nothing to do with either.
Kombucha ferments under a SCOBY — bacteria and yeast working together in one mat. It wants 20–26°C and a week and a half, and it wants to be fed sweet tea on a schedule rather than rescued when it looks sad. Water kefir works the same way with grains instead of a mat; at 22°C the grains roughly double in a week, which is how you know the culture is actually healthy.
Tepache is the loose one. Pineapple skin, unrefined sugar, water, and whatever wild yeast the fruit brought with it — 3–5DAYS at room temperature and you have a low-alcohol, faintly sour drink. Leave it a week and you have vinegar, which I know because I have done it twice.
So for these three the variables are not strain, ABV and temperature. They are feeding, cleanliness and time. The recipes carry the schedules.
The strain is already in the box.
If you would rather not choose: the monthly kit ships one recipe, the dry goods for it, the strain that suits them, and a printed log sheet with the days already ruled in. The choosing is the part I have already done.
29EUR / MONTH · CANCEL ANY TIME · SHIPS IN LITHUANIA FIRST