Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

WeDriftEternal t1_iu9vl67 wrote

Lets do a better ELI5

Yeast are voracious eaters and farters. They want to eat sugar all day and fart out alcohol and CO2. To make beer/wine/cider, you put yeast into a sugar-water substance. For beer thats a "tea" made of grains, for cider, its made of fruit, for wine, its made of grape juice. The yeast eats up all the sugar, until it runs out, you stop it, or there is so much alcohol that the yeast dies from the alcohol (seriously).

Different beers, wines, and such will actually use different yeasts that give a different flavor and are more or less tolerant to how much alcohol they can take. The yeast used for wine can often take a bit higher alcohol.

Now, the process. Well, if you leave either to ferment more and more, they will get more and more alcohol. Wine is often fermented (and aged) for much longer than beer, leading to more alcohol, in addition, some of the wine evaporates, increasing the overall alcohol of the remaining liquid.

Lastly, wine is traditionally made 10%-15% alcohol, and served in smaller glasses. Beer is traditionally served in larger quantities, and meant to be "easier" drinking, and often 5% alcohol. Both brewers and wine makers will be targeting a specific alcohol percent for taste and flavor, a good brewer/winemaker will actually hit their target (its not as easy as it sounds!).

Fun though, there actually are some wines that come in around 8% and of course specialty beers that can be 10%-20%! Additionally, there are craft brewers experimenting with using wine yeasts in beers too, although its often not a great success.

2