My next beer - I'll be combining yeasts

Other than underpitching I've never used 2 different yeasts in one batch. My next Baltic porter I really plan to actually combine yeasts. Since Baltic Porter is a lager, I want to have the lager characteristics, but I like the bready british characteristics of more traditional British Ales, so I'll be blending cultures wyeast kolsch yeast 2565 and wyeast london ale yeast 1028.

Honestly I probably won't notice a big difference, but I think it'll be kind of cool to try.

In the temperature range where both strains work well, the 2565 will throw some pretty fruity esters. Is that really what you want?

Can you provide a reason why you would mix ale and lager yeast?

Ale yeast will likely go dormant at the optimum temperature for the lager yeast. And the lager yeast could provide a lot of esters or phenolic flavors at ale yeast temperatures. And then consider the relative rates of fermentation, the ale yeast will generally ferment faster and consequently dominate the flavor profile.

Are you planning on using closely regulated temperatures to control which yeast dominates the fermentation?

Mixing two different yeast strains doesn't necessarily lead to a "fusion" of their flavor profiles or fermentation characteristics. Most likely one strain will flourish and the other will flounder.

For a lager-like beer with a british ale yeast flavor profile, it might be easier to ferment at the low temperature end for the british ale yeast.

Naturally, that's just humble opinion.
Good luck with the experiment!

The specific strains he's using have an overlap in their optimum temperature ranges. It may work, assuming one strain doesn't dominate the other, but I don't think it's going to achieve the desired results.

I, too, recommend simply using the London ale strain.

Wow, I completely failed. I though the Kolsch strain was a lager yeast.
Thanks for pointing my mistake Yuri.

Hmm, just the london ale? It does seem good for porters.

Rushis said:

Wow, I completely failed. I though the Kolsch strain was a lager yeast.
Thanks for pointing my mistake Yuri.

Click to expand...

easy mistake to make. kolsch strain is often called a pseudo lager since it does best at very cool temperatures, where most ale strains would crap out...but still warmer than a true lager strain.

kolsch yeast doesn't seem to throw near as much sulphur out, but it is a nice clean fermenting strain.

to the topic at hand, mixing strains is not a bad idea. 2 months ago BYO did a little experiment pitching Cooper's yeast with other strains and then reporting the end results (attenuation, ester/phenol profiles, etc). It did show that one yeast does not necessarily overtake the entire batch...that you can indeed get the profiles of each yeast to come through in the beer.

I've had good luck mixing yeasts, but only with yeasts that have almost identical temperture ranges. I don't know much about the 2565, but I have a feeling that fermenting at the overlap temperature isn't going to give the desired result. Fermenting outside of the overlap temperature is most likely a waste of one the yeasts.