hopvine
Well-Known Member
My father deals with water treatment in Ethanol plants, so we usually have interesting discussions regarding the parallels between homebrewing and corn ethanol production.
He mentioned the other day that a "yeast expert" from one of the industrial yeast suppliers was telling him about their new strain of yeast that is tolerant of other strains, which opens the door to fermenting a slurry with one yeast in the beginning, and another towards the ends. The guy said that typically when two strains are present, they actually attack each other before processing sugars. I may not have all the details, which leads to my questions...
1) Is this even true, or is it a marketing ploy (because wouldn't you need TWO strains that were tolerant of each other?)
2) If it is true, does beer yeast exhibit the same behavior? Is this why you never hear of people pitching two different yeasts to add to flavor complexity?
He mentioned the other day that a "yeast expert" from one of the industrial yeast suppliers was telling him about their new strain of yeast that is tolerant of other strains, which opens the door to fermenting a slurry with one yeast in the beginning, and another towards the ends. The guy said that typically when two strains are present, they actually attack each other before processing sugars. I may not have all the details, which leads to my questions...
1) Is this even true, or is it a marketing ploy (because wouldn't you need TWO strains that were tolerant of each other?)
2) If it is true, does beer yeast exhibit the same behavior? Is this why you never hear of people pitching two different yeasts to add to flavor complexity?