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Isolated Yeast (Tree House): How to Identify and Characterize?

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it's possible that it's flavors from hops as well.

Yeah, I guess that's true. The reason I was thinking it was more an artifact of the yeast is that when I took that gravity reading, the sample went through several cycles of warming to room temp and cooling as it came to temp, in an open hydrometer flask. I would have thought the hop aromas would have been much more volatile and offgassed by the time I drank the sample, so I kind of associated it with the yeast in my mind.

The other thing though is that my 100% WB-06 batch smells like that Doppelganger/Haze banana/bubblegum character out the airlock.
 
I just think for a brewery to tie up 3 FVs for every IPA...

they wouldn't have to do this though. all they need to do is have one (possibly small) FV dedicated to creating a WB-06 batch under whatever conditions best express the desired WB-06 characteristics; and then blend that in to EACH of their IPAs in whatever amount best suits each particular beer.

they could be doing the same thing with the T-58, too. hence the two smaller FVs.
neither of these dedicated ester batches need to be hopped in any particular manner, leaving the primary FVs for each batch to be hopped to the character of that particular beer, and the ester batches to be blended in to taste.
 
they wouldn't have to do this though. all they need to do is have one (possibly small) FV dedicated to creating a WB-06 batch under whatever conditions best express the desired WB-06 characteristics; and then blend that in to EACH of their IPAs in whatever amount best suits each particular beer.

they could be doing the same thing with the T-58, too. hence the two smaller FVs.
neither of these dedicated ester batches need to be hopped in any particular manner, leaving the primary FVs for each batch to be hopped to the character of that particular beer, and the ester batches to be blended in to taste.
+1

This is kind of what my speculation had me thinking as well. Or maybe they are co-pitching the S-04 and T-58 and the smaller FVs are for WB-06 only. They could use one or both, depending on how many core IPAs they are brewing at one time.
 
Now that my last @15% T-58 batch is carbed up, I do get a very subtle pepper in the finish. I don't get bubblegum, but I don't really get bubblegum from TH. I used C-40 for this batch and the sweetness is close. I'm not sure I prefer it to C-20 for my personal taste but the appearance is great, has the orangey glow and overall bright haze (vs murk) that Sap has.
Are you getting a bunch of orange character with the T-58 at 15%? I was expecting it from my large batch from that little taste I had today from when I dry hopped but didn't get any. My last two attempts (both co-pitches with all three strains) had a bunch of that character with the T-58 at 6% ish. I also pitched more yeast in this latest one and pitched cooler, so that could be why too.
 
they wouldn't have to do this though. all they need to do is have one (possibly small) FV dedicated to creating a WB-06 batch under whatever conditions best express the desired WB-06 characteristics; and then blend that in to EACH of their IPAs in whatever amount best suits each particular beer.

they could be doing the same thing with the T-58, too. hence the two smaller FVs.
neither of these dedicated ester batches need to be hopped in any particular manner, leaving the primary FVs for each batch to be hopped to the character of that particular beer, and the ester batches to be blended in to taste.
I really don't know if this has been mentioned (I assume it has), but they definitely do have a row of small fermenters next to a row of much larger vessels
 
No tours at tree house. It's show up, get in line, buy your beer, and get out. However the brewery is within full view while inside. You'd have to know what you're looking for. View is generally this. Far right are the kettles cropped out, and far left is generally obstructed by the canning line.

Tree-House-Brewing-600x343.jpg


New brewery opening soon too.
@TheHairyHop, funny you should mention that, I was just going through some of the early posts to find the pic. Looks like post 144?
 
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I may have pictures of the old one, but I'm going off of the new one. I can't upload my pictures because hombrewtalk contracts the forum out to cavemen who don't know how to automatically resize picture files.
 
I may have pictures of the old one, but I'm going off of the new one. I can't upload my pictures because hombrewtalk contracts the forum out to cavemen who don't know how to automatically resize picture files.
So speaking out loud here to all. If those small tanks are not used for wb-06 for blending, then what else would they be used for? Pilot batches? Also check out my attached picture. What are those tanks by the canning line?
 

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My guess would be pilot batches. They always have two or so beers available for draft that are new or rare. I have no clue what those vessels by the canning line could be. Maybe speisse?
There's just a lot of guessing to be had. I'll take the space to make a point that it was never tested that an S04 culture can't plate out other fermentis strains. Every lab deals with infections. See White Labs and the recent diasticus fiasco
 
Raised the temp of the large S-04/T-58 (85/15%) batch to 67F yesterday morning and added the second dry hop last night at about 72 hours post pitch. Also started the cold crash on the small 100% WB-06 batch yesterday morning, even though I'm not kegging until this weekend. I want to drop out as much of the powdery WB-06 as possible. The small batch received no dry hops.
 
Raised the temp of the large S-04/T-58 (85/15%) batch to 67F yesterday morning and added the second dry hop last night at about 72 hours post pitch. Also started the cold crash on the small 100% WB-06 batch yesterday morning, even though I'm not kegging until this weekend. I want to drop out as much of the powdery WB-06 as possible. The small batch received no dry hops.
Will you be naturally carbing this batch? I was thinking of brewing with the trio this week, but might wait to see how yours comes out with the blending experiment hehe Also, do you guys think TH only cold conditions for around a week? I’m still skeptical about that.
 
Posted a write-up of my second try with this blend (11:1:1), fermented at 60F ambient. It was sort of an low-bitterness APA/session with Citra and Amarillo. I preferred the cooler fermentation and more restrained esters compared to my first batch. Also split this batch with dry hops on brew day and day four to see how that changed the impression. No big surprise, but the later dry hops had a more evidently "hoppy" result.
 
Posted a write-up of my second try with this blend (11:1:1), fermented at 60F ambient. It was sort of an low-bitterness APA/session with Citra and Amarillo. I preferred the cooler fermentation and more restrained esters compared to my first batch. Also split this batch with dry hops on brew day and day four to see how that changed the impression. No big surprise, but the later dry hops had a more evidently "hoppy" result.

Thanks for posting the link! Btw, I love your writeups/articles and have learned a lot from them.

What kind of esters are you getting from this batch? More citrus or more bubblegum/banana? I suppose some of that character might be difficult to peg as hops or yeast.
 
Will you be naturally carbing this batch? I was thinking of brewing with the trio this week, but might wait to see how yours comes out with the blending experiment hehe Also, do you guys think TH only cold conditions for around a week? I’m still skeptical about that.
Yeah, I'm planning to naturally carb with the third dry hop in the keg. I want to do as much as I can to prevent O2 ingress, so naturally carbing should do a lot for me there. Planning to keg on Sunday.
 
Thanks for posting the link! Btw, I love your writeups/articles and have learned a lot from them.

What kind of esters are you getting from this batch? More citrus or more bubblegum/banana? I suppose some of that character might be difficult to peg as hops or yeast.

I get more banana, but it is pretty mild. With the Citra and Amarillo it is certainly citrusy, but nothing out of place for the hops. Even the first batch (which I found more expressive from a warmer ferment) I was surprised how few people mentioned the yeast character without me prodding.
 
Couple of notes/thoughts I have since catching up on this thread today...

1 - Smaller fermenter looking things could be yeast propagators?

2- Does anyone have any Weyermann white wheat? I find that whenever I taste the kernels, I get a "Treehouse" type flavor from them. I get a similar flavor from Wyeast 1968 yeast which is supposed to be very similar to S-04.

3 - I am wondering if Threehouse has a wheat beer (or a separate beer for that matter) they brew with wit yeast and blends a certain percentage back in at some point prior to packaging.

I seriously cannot imagine they're co-pitching all the different yeasts at the same time and hoping for a desired result. My suspicion is that they are brewing a base beer with S-04 and then something else, with wheat and WB-06 to produce that banana/bubblegum thing, blending (I have no idea at what ratio) the two beers and using T-58 to increase attenuation/dry it out a little and then CBC-1 to condition. Doing this would kill the other strains, lock in the flavor profile and prevent them from producing additional unwanted flavours in the can...."shelf stability" for lack of a better term.
 
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Couple of notes/thoughts I have since catching up on this thread today...

1 - Smaller fermenter looking things could be yeast propagators?

2- Does anyone have any Weyermann white wheat? I find that whenever I taste the kernels, I get a "Treehouse" type flavor from them. I get a similar flavor from Wyeast 1968 yeast which is supposed to be very similar to S-04.

3 - I am wondering if Threehouse has a wheat beer (or a separate beer for that matter) they brew with wit yeast and blends a certain percentage back in at some point prior to packaging.

I seriously cannot imagine they're co-pitching all the different yeasts at the same time and hoping for a desired result. My suspicion is that they are brewing a base beer with S-04 and then something else, with wheat and WB-06 to produce that banana/bubblegum thing, blending (I have no idea at what ratio) the two beers and using T-58 to increase attenuation/dry it out a little and then CBC-1 to condition. Doing this would kill the other strains, lock in the flavor profile and prevent them from producing additional unwanted flavours in the can...."shelf stability" for lack of a better term.
T-58 isn't the most attenuative of the 3
 
Funny enough, I was just reading the Yeast book by Chris White last night through the section on using multiple strains for added complexity. While purely anecdotal, his recommendation was to co-pitch all strains in the beginning claiming that most brewer's yeast propagates at similar rates and most flavor development is in the first 72 hours. I know this in no way rules out the blending people keep bringing up (and the evidence that the Alchemist does it), just found it interesting. I've been trying the copitched blend at 66 deg F myself without any real success so far. My last batch was meh, and didn't attenuate enough with the blend. Is anybody elevating the temp after the first few days to try and bump up attenuating? What kind of attenuation are y'all getting from these blends?
 
Raised the temp of the large S-04/T-58 (85/15%) batch to 67F yesterday morning and added the second dry hop last night at about 72 hours post pitch. Also started the cold crash on the small 100% WB-06 batch yesterday morning, even though I'm not kegging until this weekend. I want to drop out as much of the powdery WB-06 as possible. The small batch received no dry hops.
speaking of attenuation, are you worried about carrying over the WB06 into the (relatively) under attenuated S04/T58 batch?
 
speaking of attenuation, are you worried about carrying over the WB06 into the (relatively) under attenuated S04/T58 batch?
Yeah, I am TBH. We'll see what happens. I mean, the difference between 78% and 83% apparent attenuation on a 1.080 beer is like 4 gravity points, so not insignificant. I will likely adjust the amount of primer I use. I am also giving the WB-06 batch an extra long cold crash, which may help.

Also considering pitching more CBC-1 than the 2 g I've been using for this to help it outcompete the WB-06, but CBC-1 has very low attenuation as well, so who knows if that will help.

It will be a learning experience for sure.
 
Hi all,

Longtime lurker, signed up to follow this thread. I visited Monson back in early 2016 and one of the photos I took of the brewery included the fermentation control panel/ temperature gauges with the beers listed on them. Every other time I visited the brewery the panel was covered up. I am not on my home computer right now but will try to dig up the photo and post it here.

I am a little ashamed of how long I studied and zoomed in on that photo but I can confirm the 3 smaller fermenters (5 bbl) held beers that released as growler fill only. I believe one was trail magic...

This was obviously almost two years ago but I agree with Melville's reasoning. I do not believe they are blending different batches.

Anyone else ever able to get a photo of that panel?
 
isn't 4 GP about what is needed to carbonate the batch?
Yep, right around there. I'm not sure the difference in attenuation is going to be that much though. My last co-pitched attempt only went down to 75% attenuation or so. That was with 3% WB-06.
 
Years ago, when Wyeast would answer homebrewers' questions submitted on their website, I asked about blending yeasts and co-pitching. Greg Doss himself replied to me, and this was his response:

"There will be nothing wrong (or weird) with blending the two strains,
however one culture will most likely dominate the fermentation. If you
want to get profiles of each strain, ferment each strain separately and
then blend beers at the end."

So now we essentially have one yeast lab that recommends copitching (Chris White through the Yeast book, as @KnowYourDemons posted) and one that recommends blending separate ferments.

I'm not really saying I think it's more likely that TH is blending, co-pitching, etc. Just that they could be doing either and we don't really know.

The reason that I wanted to do the separate/blended this time is that of my two attempts I had one with excessive clove and another with no bubblegum/banana to speak of. Fermentis on their WB-06 spec sheet recommends fermenting "above 73.4F for banana." My first attempt was pitched at 77F and had very little banana, a lot of orange (from the T-58 I assume) and a lot of clove that faded over time but never went away completely. It was also SUPER tart, I assume from fermenting the S-04 so warm. My next attempt was copitched and fermented cool, but i halved the WB-06. I didn't notice the WB-06 at all. No undesirable phenols, but also no desirable banana-bubblegum esters from it. But much, much less tart.

So based on that I knew I wanted to expose the strains to different temperatures. I was deciding between staggered pitches and separate ferments, and I chose separate ferments because I feel like on my system it is more controllable than staggered pitches.
 
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I'm not really saying I think it's more likely that TH is blending, co-pitching, etc. Just that they could be doing either and we don't really know.

The reason that I wanted to do the separate/blended this time is that of my two attempts I had one with excessive clove and another with no bubblegum/banana to speak of. Fermentis on their WB-06 spec sheet recommends fermenting "above 73.4F for banana." My first attempt was pitched at 77F and had very little banana, a lot of orange (from the T-58 I assume) and a lot of clove that faded over time but never went away completely. It was also SUPER tart, I assume from fermenting the S-04 so warm. My next attempt was copitched and fermented cool, but i halved the WB-06. I didn't notice the WB-06 at all. No undesirable phenols, but also no desirable banana-bubblegum esters from it. But much, much less tart.

So based on that I knew I wanted to expose the strains to different temperatures. I was deciding between staggered pitches and separate ferments, and I chose separate ferments because I feel like on my system it is more controllable than staggered pitches.

I am extremely curious as to how your brew turns out. I believe there could be multiple paths that lead to a similar destination and we may never know if TH does blend, co-pitch yeast, or stagger pitches. I know other breweries (The Veil) have stated they use a mix of yeasts as well for their house ale yeast. Again, does that mean co-pitch, blend, staggering? With the demand for these breweries is it feasible to tie up multiple tanks for blending?

We are all vested in this thread to learn insight into TH process and ultimately create some great beer. I do not know TH's process but I am just trying to contribute and figure out the best way to achieve their quality of beer. From the fermentation panel at TH (if i can recall correctly), almost all of their beers were fermenting in a single fermenter, not multiple fermenters per batch and the three 5 bbl tanks housed one-off/smaller batch beers. This would lead me to believe they are not blending but I am not claiming to have special insight, especially when it comes to brewing at that scale.
 
I believe there could be multiple paths that lead to a similar destination

Yeah, for sure. I certainly didn't exhaust my options with copitching, and I know others like @melville have had great results with copitching. Also, I believe @marshallb (and maybe others?) have had good results with both copitching and staggered pitching. I'm looking forward to when my blended ferment batch is ready so I can offer my anecdotes on how my co-pitches and the blend compare.
 
We are all vested in this thread to learn insight into TH process and ultimately create some great beer. I do not know TH's process but I am just trying to contribute and figure out the best way to achieve their quality of beer.

Meant to say this earlier, but i in no way intended to imply your contribution is not valid. Sorry if it came off that way.
 
Raised the temp of the large S-04/T-58 (85/15%) batch to 67F yesterday morning and added the second dry hop last night at about 72 hours post pitch. Also started the cold crash on the small 100% WB-06 batch yesterday morning, even though I'm not kegging until this weekend. I want to drop out as much of the powdery WB-06 as possible. The small batch received no dry hops.

I'm a little late to the party here, but found this forum a couple weeks ago and have been picking through it collecting as much information as I can. I found the information in this forum very intriguing. I'm just about to cold crash my first run at this trio of yeast. My first try was co-pitching at 70 and lowering to 64 after 24 hours. I haven't taken a sample yet so I am unsure of the results, but will post once I do. I had very low ratios with the T-58 (5%) and WB-06(3%). I plan on brewing a new batch this week to try some different methods. I'm really curious to see your results of blending @ThePaleAleIndian . I like the idea because like you and others have said you need each yeast at different temps to get what you want. I am also curious to know what your pitching rates and volume were on the WB-06? I know its been stated that CBC-1 is a "killer" yeast. So have you thought about pitching it into the WB-06 fermenter or maybe the t-58 and s-04 before blending to stop the WB-06 from eating up a bunch of sugars and producing those "off" flavors.

Also I remember reading in the beginning that someone, I believe @melville shared a post from Nate and how they use 95% base malt in a lot of their beers. Anybody give this a try? Maybe 95% GP or 2-row and 5% carafoam?
 
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