Multiple yeast fermentation

Hi

Does anyone have experience with using more than one yeast strain in one fermentation?

A few months back I tried my hand at making a hybrid beer, ale recipe with lager yeast. My temperatures were completely wrong resulting in a long lag time to start fermenting and a slow decline in gravity. Scared that some infection might find its way into the half fermented wort I pitched some ale yeast into the fermentor aswell. 3days later it was done fermenting and bottled.

Turned out to be a quite nice beer.

I am wondering, before I run off experimenting, if it would just be a waste of yeast and time to combine different strains in the same fermentor or would it add something to the finished beer?

Cheers

You can certainly add multiple strains of yeast to a wort, but chances are that one yeast strain will out-compete the other to produce a final product. I'm guess that is what happened when you pitched the ale yeast into your fermenting lager beer.

Because yeast counts numbers will greatly affect the degree of competition and homebrewers typically don't have a good way to measure it, your experiments will likely be very inconsistent. Buy hey, that is experimentation....its all how far you want to take it...

A co-pitch of two ale yeasts or two lager yeasts may give more a hybrid flavor than a ale-lager pitch. That is just a prediction however.

I just did a Tripel that used two yeasts. I used 1214 and 3787. It qas bottled aout two weeks ago and that sample at bottling was very good. I will post ip the results after it has had some time to carb up and age.

Hangman said:

. . . . . I am wondering, before I run off experimenting, if it would just be a waste of yeast and time to combine different strains in the same fermentor or would it add something to the finished beer?

Cheers

Click to expand...

It could add something, it could take something away, it depends on what cultures you're using and a TON of other parameters. I'd suggest studying what beer you want to make and determine what yeasts you want to try by studying their parameters.

FYI, quite a few cultures have more than one "strain" in them already.

Brew on my friend