Yeast Blending Tips?

I am going to try my hat at brewing a Saison with Belgium Saison Blend WLP 566 and Cali Ale WLP001, I love both of these yeast and would love to use them at the same time to get a Cali-Belgium type brew. I was thinking about just throwing them both in at the same time and letting them fight it out or pitching one in one day one and then the other at week 2. Any tips?

001 is a clean yeast, and will not give much character. Seems a waste of time to combine them. It may cut down the flavors from the 566; but why do it?

Calder said:

001 is a clean yeast, and will not give much character. Seems a waste of time to combine them. It may cut down the flavors from the 566; but why do it?

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It was something that i kinda had in the back of my mine. Those are just two yeasts that came into mine where I really like the taste of each, but I see your case. I really have been wanting to try something where i blend yeast to satisfy some curiosity and because the beer I am working on, a Saison, has every in threes in the ingredients. If you have a suggestion, let me know.

Thanks.

If you wanted to mellow the flavors of the 566, just ferment it cooler. An experiment that would interest me more would be blending the 566 with another Belgian yeast, say the 500, and see what kind of "saison" it produces. Now you're creating a new flavor combination instead of just muting one. That's my .02 anyway.

I think its pretty tough to actually blend yeasts without one of them just taking over and the other one falling by the wayside. You've only got so many nutrients available, and whichever one grows better (I'd probably guess the 001) just out-competes the other strain. If you've got the room you could always ferment half with one yeast and half with another, then blend back before bottling/kegging.

Are you using the 566 Saison or the 568 Saison blend? If you were going for threes it sounded more like you were using the 568 blend (two yeasts). In that case if you were tied to threes, you could toss some brett in there at the end and get it kinda funky!

Researching for an upcoming saison and came across this thread.

I blended 565 with 001 on a split batch of Lil Sumpin Sumpin clone and the saison blend actually went lower than 001 on its own. Just straight up pitched a vile of each at the same time and bottled in under 2 weeks. Taste was still peppery and saison-like. Blending 565 seems to be the way to go.