A community dedicated to homebrewing beer, mead, wine, cider and everything in between. If it ferments, bring it over here.
Share recipes, ideas, ask for feedback or just advice.
Some starting points for beginners:
Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine
In my experience, all the yeast will make alcohol. We use bread yeast when making moonshine since it’ll be distilled anyway.
To your question, yes, different strains impart their own flavors. We have made cider with both champagne yeast and ale yeast and they are distinctly different from the same base.
KillerTofu got it right, I just wanted to post and agree rather than just upvote. Yeasts changed the flavor of my homebrewing pretty significantly as well.
Same—my local micro brewery does a night once a month where they demo things about brewing. One month they made 6 ales with identical ingredients apart from a different strain of yeast for each. 6 very different drinks.
I've done this for some homebrews where I split the cooled wort into 2 fermenters and used different yeasts.
For instance, for a porter, I used a california lager yeast in one and a kveik in the other. Massive difference, though they were fermenting at around 20 Celsius, so a bit under for the kveik.
I know this is beer and OP asked for wine/cider but I'd expect the same to be true for those yeasts.
Brewery owner I know swears that yeast is the most important thing. Idk. I've not tested it, but it's his livelihood.
As others said it makes a big difference.
I made cider with lager, ale, champaign, wine and yeast separated from live culture (some garden mix). Each had different character and some were bad.
I would suggest some wine or ale yeast but it is because they are easiest to come by for me.