Wyeast Octoberfest 2633

[seajellie]

Hey all, I ended up coming home after a blind date to the LHBS where the only fresh liquid lager yeast they had was 2633. This yeast is a blend of lager yeasts, and is supposedly a low sulfur producer. I've never used it, don't know much about it, and had been hoping to do a run of lagers off of one yeast. Not sure if all of the beer styles I wanted to do will work well with this, however.

So, any guesses what yeasts are in the blend?

Has anyone used this for a run of lagers, and noticed any drift over time in taste, performance, malt/bitterness ratio, etc?

I was planning to do a Festbier and a Vienna, which should be perfect.

I wanted to start with a leichtbier - which should be fine as this blend should boost the malt in this light beer.

It's the pilsner(s) and the schwarz that have me curious about results with this yeast. Perhaps I'll have to push the pilsner into helles territory, or "export", and push the schwarz closer to a baltic porter.

Usually I get a yeast that does all of these styles at least moderately well, and can get what I want with mashing, pitch rate, and recipe.

Flavor drift over generations is of particular interest with this blend. It's supposed to attenuate well, so it seems that a pilsner and schwarz would be doable, if not perfect.

Thanks!

 

[dustinstriplin]

Yeast blends will not yield consistent results over multiple generations. You could make a large starter with it and repitch part of the starter in each beer, or build up the starter for each beer. Rebuilding a starter is a better practice than reusing a yeast cake because the yeast has usually been used and abused in the yeast cake. That won't get you out of the woods completely for predicability, but you aren't making the same beer 3 times anyway.

Your intuition seems correct about what styles this will work with. A schwarz and pils (german?) will benefit from a different yeast strain, unless you get lucky and a cleaner strain prevails in the yeast pitch.