First time making an apple cider. Which yeast products are the best to use for cider? Is there any other alternative to brewer's yeast?
The best brewer yeast to make cider is a cider yeast. Wyeast makes a few dry or liquid yeast for cider, which I tried and was satisfied with.
Alternatives are plenty, in fact any yeast can be used, but each will perform differently. For your first cider batch, I would play safe and use a proper cider yeast (like Wyeast STRAIN: 4766 CIDER ™).
Here is an article with alternatives: https://byo.com/article/yeast-selection-for-cider/
tl;dr: NO. Forget it. Ain't never no gonna work. Not for cider, not for beer, not for nuffin'.
Explanation:
Brewer's yeast sold as (part of any) nutritional supplement is usually spent yeast that has been sold off by one brewery or another to a food products manufacturer. It has been processed into a food supplement and as part of that process it has generally been heated to inactivate it. Translation: it's dead as a dodo. It won't have any viability left and can't be expected to ferment anything at all.
You might be able to use it as part of a yeast nutrient, though. Inactivated (read: dead) yeast makes up the bulk of various yeast nutrient blends.
As Philippe says, get a proper cider yeast.
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Some nutritional/probiotic yeasts and bacteria are sold live, not all are dead. – dmtaylor Apr 18 at 12:20
Someone here claims that Saccharomyces boulardii makes a decent cider. I haven't tried this myself and remain skeptical, but here is a link:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/growing-saccharomyces-boulardii-from-a-capsule.590913/
My favorite cider yeast is Red Star Cote des Blancs. Outstanding every time I have used it. And cheap, you can buy multiple packs on Amazon and they keep in the refrigerator for many years.
