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

[ThePaleAleIndian]

My current is mostly Galaxy and Cashmere (with lactose and vanilla). Would use again.

That sounds awesome! Is this that stout you mentioned you were going to use T-58 on or an IPA?

 

[rappinduke]

I bought a ton of Tree House beer the last couple of days and as a result have been drinking a ton of Tree House beer the last couple of days. The thing that strikes me is how sweet all their beers are. They’re almost syrupy tasting. I get almost no clove or spice except on the very finish of a sip. To be honest, they all taste very similar too. This is comparing Julius, Alter, In Perpetuity and Sssapp. The only thing I’m confident a about is that my three yeast blend clone is no where near correct.

I also made it up to treehouse this week and got the same variety of beers. This is only my second visit to the new location and I got to say these don’t seem like the same beers I used to get back in Monson. Maybe it’s just me but everything seemed a little bit muted. Aroma was lacking, mouthfeel was a bit thin with a very dry and almost mineral like finish. Feel like treehouse beers used to sorta coat your palate with that soft bitterness and juicy hop goodness that would just kinda stick around for awhile.Now when I take a sip there’s a hint of that and then it’s gone immediately. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Anybody else notice this?

 

[Jmash]

It's kind of like FF and Loral mixed together, but with the pine replaced by coconut. Generic fruit, some noble herb, that coconut, and an overall fruitiness that is very pleasant

I ordered some Cashmere. How much and when did you add? I'm doing 5 gallons tomorrow. Won't make it to boil or whirlpool but should have by dh time

 

[TheHairyHop]

I didn't WP any. I did 2 oz at high krausen (day 1.5-2) and 2 oz post complete fermentation with some sugar water thrown in to kick start some oxygen scrubbing. I ended up with ~3.5 gallons. About 4 went in the fermenter btw

 

[TheHairyHop]

I should note that I'm purposefully overhopping with a single variety to get the most intense vibe of it. Although that being said, I personally thought the hopping rate was fine. The one technical caveat is that the first 2 oz seemed a bit... dull. I quickly ordered from another distributor and was much more satisfied with the quality. I think that 4 oz of fresh pellets in that many gallons could be too much.

 

[ThePaleAleIndian]

I should note that I'm purposefully overhopping with a single variety to get the most intense vibe of it. Although that being said, I personally thought the hopping rate was fine. The one technical caveat is that the first 2 oz seemed a bit... dull. I quickly ordered from another distributor and was much more satisfied with the quality. I think that 4 oz of fresh pellets in that many gallons could be too much.

Who were the distributors?

 

[TheHairyHop]

First was farmhouse second was Yakima valley

 

[Sbe2]

Has anyone tried kegging with 4-6 pts left using a spunding valve?

It’s a LoDo technique I just read about.

 

[Jmash]

First was farmhouse second was Yakima valley

Well that sucks. I ordered mine from Farmhouse

 

[TheHairyHop]

Has anyone tried kegging with 4-6 pts left using a spunding valve?

It’s a LoDo technique I just read about.

yea, but I found the timing to require too much attention and fussing with pressure release or addition later on. I now just rack into keg with priming sugar

 

[TheHairyHop]

Well that sucks. I ordered mine from Farmhouse

I order all of my hops from Farmhouse. The package hadn't lost its seal, and the other packs that I have from the same age are fine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[couchsending]

Has anyone tried kegging with 4-6 pts left using a spunding valve?

It’s a LoDo technique I just read about.

Tried it a few times last summer to mixed results... just did it again on a test batch I fermented in a carboy (normally use 7g SS Conicals) as its virtually impossible to cold crash in a carboy without O2 Ingress at least with the devices I have handy... i bagged 6oz of mostly 2016 hops I had left over (split nelson/Mosaic) hung them in a keg after pushing Star San out of half of it. Pushed the rest of the SS out then purged at 30 PsI 7 times then transferred. I ended up transferring with only 2 points to go and it was enough to sufficiently carb the keg. Left it at room temp for 6 days, then into the fridge at 35 for a few days.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, I just don’t get the aroma I’d like when spunding. I attribute it to bagging the hops. I do have a dip tube screen so one day I might try it loose.

 

[thunderaxe]

I also made it up to treehouse this week and got the same variety of beers. This is only my second visit to the new location and I got to say these don’t seem like the same beers I used to get back in Monson. Maybe it’s just me but everything seemed a little bit muted. Aroma was lacking, mouthfeel was a bit thin with a very dry and almost mineral like finish. Feel like treehouse beers used to sorta coat your palate with that soft bitterness and juicy hop goodness that would just kinda stick around for awhile.Now when I take a sip there’s a hint of that and then it’s gone immediately. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Anybody else notice this?

i just had my first tree house beers ever after picking up a bunch of cans on thursday. i also got julius, alter ego, SSSAPPP, and in perpetuity. in perpetuity is by far my favourite. since i've never had them before i can't compare them to any previous versions but i have to say none of them are really blowing my mind at all. the hop aroma is very subdued on them all compared to many beers in this style i've had and even the mouthfeel pales in comparison to a few i've had lately.

the main thing i wanted to share, though, as a naive impression, is how yeast and malt-forward these beers are. to my palate the nose is mostly yeast and the taste is mostly toasty malts which combine into an experience akin to freshly baked bread. not at all unpleasant but also not at all what i expected.

i can say from this that there is definitely some kind of toasted malt in the grain bill -- the fresh bread impression makes me think munich but it could also be vienna or aromatic as @marshallb was suggesting in his recipe; also the just sheer yeastiness of the aroma is making me think of hefeweizen yeast more than any specific banana, bubblegum or clove flavours. again, just like a bakery or fresh bread.

i understand i might not be experiencing them at their best but it might also be useful for helping pin down a recipe.

 

[chieftain]

Has anyone tried kegging with 4-6 pts left using a spunding valve?

It’s a LoDo technique I just read about.

I'm going to try this next week, following a post I read by JC from Trillium on another board. Ferment first in a BMB, adding 1st round of dry hops after 2-3 days, then closed transfer to a corny keg with spunding valve for second round of dry hops.

 

[ThePaleAleIndian]

Has anyone tried kegging with 4-6 pts left using a spunding valve?

It’s a LoDo technique I just read about.

My worry with doing this in a carboy has always been that I already have a ton of hop material in there by 4-6 points left. So to avoid clogging the works I would have to cold crash the carboy. At that point though, using a blend of yeasts I'm not sure which one would reactivate first and what flavors would result. Meh, maybe the last 4-6 points wouldn't make significant flavors though, I don't know. Just thinking out loud.

I would love to try it with a "neat" 1318 beer or something. Never have though.

 

[Jmash]

@rappinduke I totally agree with the subdued flavor at the Charleton plant. I was there two weeks ago and got Doubleganger which blew my mind similar to the way doppleganger did at the Monson local. It's almost like the Doubleganger, Very Green, Very Hazy and JJJulius are replacing their predecessors.
At a higher price and more limited availability of course

 

[robopp]

I just want to figure out how to get the yeasty fruit flavor that’s in all of their beers.

 

[melville]

That sounds awesome! Is this that stout you mentioned you were going to use T-58 on or an IPA?

The Galaxy and Cashmere with vanilla and lactose is an IPA

with pretty much the grist and yeast blend % as before.

Now have the stout with lactose, vanilla, coffee, and chocolate with s-05 and I think 15% T-58 on tap too.

 

[Jmash]

The Galaxy and Cashmere with vanilla and lactose is an IPA with pretty much the grist and yeast blend % as before.

Now have the stout with lactose, vanilla, coffee, and chocolate with s-05 and I think 15% T-58 on tap too.

When did you add the lactose and vanilla?

 

[couchsending]

Been listening to some interesting MBAA podcasts lately, I would highly highly recommend them if you haven’t listened already.

I think their most popular one is in regards to the effect of dry hopping on bitterness. One point of note that I found interesting is that if you have a lot of theoretical IBUs coming from the kettle that heavy dry hopping can actually reduce perceived bitterness which was interesting. A lot of other great info in that podcast.

 

[melville]

When did you add the lactose and vanilla?

Lactose in the the last 10 minutes of the boil, vanilla in the dry hop.

 

[rappinduke]

@rappinduke I totally agree with the subdued flavor at the Charleton plant. I was there two weeks ago and got Doubleganger which blew my mind similar to the way doppleganger did at the Monson local. It's almost like the Doubleganger, Very Green, Very Hazy and JJJulius are replacing their predecessors.
At a higher price and more limited availability of course

Okay I’m glad it’s not just me. I was looking around and I see that it has been mentioned before. I wonder if this is just how the beer will be going forward or if they are still trying to get things dialed in as they increase production. I’ll def try to get up there again in a month or 2 maybe try and get one of the bigger hoppy beers. Agree that aroma and taste seem to be more yeast forward over the hops. I think the biggest disappointment is it’s missing that soft but full mouthfeel. The beers are tasting thin to me. The softness is there though. Maybe too soft?

 

[isomerization]

@isomerization did you ever test the isolates against the dry yeast in a fermentation to see if the flavor profiles were the same?

I never ended up using the isolates you sent me... wonder if there is any viabile cells left...

I did use them in the batch I tried, but I didn't do anything close to what the "standard procedure" is now (close to what @marshallb recommended). I unfortunately lost all my yeast strains to a freezer issue once I had to move them out of the -80C I had been using.

 

[isomerization]

It's always possible, but experiments in this thread suggest that WB-06 or something like it is important to the taste. It's worth noting that although people treat diastaticus as a separate species, it's more just a marker for one (very obvious) gene. In human terms diastaticus is more like "redhead" or "blue-eyed" rather than "gorilla" or "chimp".

As an aside, going back to the original PCRs, I'm not sure that TH are using WB-06. It's not a great picture, but although the gold star yeast is very similar to WB-06, there looks like a 230bp band has moved to 180bp. So maybe it's one of the other Fermentis yeasts, maybe Be-256? That MTF email omits Be-256 from the list of POF+ yeasts, which would help control the clove.

I tested Be-256 previously: Isolated Yeast (Tree House): How to Identify and Characterize?

More PCRs: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/...y-and-characterize.623221/page-3#post-8022874

And my utmost apologies for the poor quality DNA gels

I do stand by the WB-06 analysis, with the caveat that the "gold star" strain most closely resembles WB-06 versus the other tested strains. Keep in mind those samples were run on different gels, you can see the spacing between the ladder DNA bands is NOT the same, which means matching up bands is going to be imperfect.

 

[Jmash]

Im sure this has been asked before so forgive me if it has. Is it possible to do the similar testing to determine hop or grain varieties?

 

[ThePaleAleIndian]

So a quick update on my blended batch, full report was post #1769.

This stuff has settled into a flavor profile that I am very happy with. I think the ester profile is very, very close - including the banana-bubblegum character. Mouthfeel is great, I assume from the 200 ppm chloride and natural carb. Hop saturation is also good, so is the residual sweetness. No clove character whatsoever, which is great. It has not darkened at all, so I think i did a decent job keeping O2 out while blending. Natural carb helps with that too of course. It also hasn't cleared at all.

The things that it's still missing are the subtle TH spice, the fresh-wort-like hop character and the "roundness." To me, I think more "round" means less tart, and this is slightly more tart than a TH beer. The more I think about it, the more I think these missing elements don't come from the yeast. I feel like the spice and fresh hoppy wort thing could both be from doing hot hop additions post ferment (i.e. hoppy gyle or hop extract). For my next attempt (which won't be for a while unfortunately), I plan to use rehopped gyle for naturally carbing and I am considering experimenting with adjusting the pH of the finished beer up with something like KHCO3, for that roundness.

 

[sheikyerbouti]

I also made it up to treehouse this week and got the same variety of beers. This is only my second visit to the new location and I got to say these don’t seem like the same beers I used to get back in Monson. Maybe it’s just me but everything seemed a little bit muted. Aroma was lacking, mouthfeel was a bit thin with a very dry and almost mineral like finish. Feel like treehouse beers used to sorta coat your palate with that soft bitterness and juicy hop goodness that would just kinda stick around for awhile.Now when I take a sip there’s a hint of that and then it’s gone immediately. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Anybody else notice this?

I go every 2 to 3 weeks and I agree.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Im sure this has been asked before so forgive me if it has. Is it possible to do the similar testing to determine hop or grain varieties?

It's an interesting question, with no easy answer. There's a few things to consider :

Testing yeast is a completely different thing, as you're not looking for yeast DNA in the beer itself, you plate out yeast and then pick out "pure" yeast. Any kind of agricultural product can contain things that inhibit PCR - for instance, red potatoes have something that stops it dead, whereas the same test can work fine in white potatoes. So the first question would be - does beer contain similar inhibitors, and can they be easily removed?

The next question would be - does any plant DNA survive the process of making the beer - boiling, filtration, yeast feeding etc? If not then you're wasting your time.

Then you have to work out what DNA to test for. Different sequences will be useful depending on whether you're trying to eg tell the difference between wheat, barley and oats, or between different varieties of barley. In yeast this is easy, because there's been huge amounts of work done on yeast in the public domain. I'd imagine it would be easy to find primers to distinguish between the cereal species, and I'd imagine there's a limited amount of information below that - you could probably find primers that would distinguish between eg German, British and US barley, but anything more specific would probably be inside companies only. With hops you could probably find something to distinguish Goldings and Fuggles, but there's no guarantee that those primers would distinguish any of the US hops.

So - it might work, but you'd have to be prepared for it not to, or for only fairly broad-brush information to be obtained. We're only in the very early days of characterising commercial brewing yeast, never mind more complicated stuff.

 

[thunderaxe]

FWIW the beers i bought on the 15th are really starting to come into their own right about now, a week and a half later. when they were fresh they tasted like yeast and raw wort, like freshly baked bread more than anything. i had a julius last night though and those flavours have all mellowed considerably, and now there are a ton of juicy tropical flavours coming through that were getting completely covered up before.

 

[rappinduke]

FWIW the beers i bought on the 15th are really starting to come into their own right about now, a week and a half later. when they were fresh they tasted like yeast and raw wort, like freshly baked bread more than anything. i had a julius last night though and those flavours have all mellowed considerably, and now there are a ton of juicy tropical flavours coming through that were getting completely covered up before.

I’m having the same experience. They all are tasting better then they did that first week.

 

[ThePaleAleIndian]

So call me crazy... but i just had a beer by Evil Twin called I Always Felt Closer to IPAs than I Did to People. I perceived the same kind of spice character that I get in TH. To me this is further evidence that the spice is not yeast derived. Although I guess a less likely scenario is that Evil Twin uses something similar to a T-58. But to me, Ockham's razor says not yeast.

 

[Jwin]

So call me crazy... but i just had a beer by Evil Twin called I Always Felt Closer to IPAs than I Did to People. I perceived the same kind of spice character that I get in TH. To me this is further evidence that the spice is not yeast derived. Although I guess a less likely scenario is that Evil Twin uses something similar to a T-58. But to me, Ockham's razor says not yeast.

I didn't get any spiciness from it myself. It was a passion fruit bomb to my palate.
I've been drinking a fair bit of Belgian strongs lately though so subtlety could have been missed. Seemed a more neutral Cali ale yeast to me though.
Edit: the 4 pack I grabbed was extremely fresh(2 weeks) though.

 

[ThePaleAleIndian]

I didn't get any spiciness from it myself. It was a passion fruit bomb to my palate.
I've been drinking a fair bit of Belgian strongs lately though so subtlety could have been missed. Seemed a more neutral Cali ale yeast to me though.
Edit: the 4 pack I grabbed was extremely fresh(2 weeks) though.

Yeah, I agree it was quite neutral otherwise. But also quite sweet. I don't know, maybe spice is the wrong word. It was much more subtle in the ET than in TH to my palate. It was a character that I thought came from the T-58 in TH but my attempts at 10-15% T-58 have me doubting that. I'm not sure when the can of ET I had was packaged, couldn't find a stamp on it.

 

[NJGeorge]

I didn't get any spiciness from it myself. It was a passion fruit bomb to my palate.
I've been drinking a fair bit of Belgian strongs lately though so subtlety could have been missed. Seemed a more neutral Cali ale yeast to me though.
Edit: the 4 pack I grabbed was extremely fresh(2 weeks) though.

Exactly what I was going to say. Passion fruit bomb! No spice to my tastes.

 

[rappinduke]

Thinking about giving Imperial yeast a try for my next batch. Looks like there are quite a few options that sound like they would work well for this style. Does anyone have experience with these? There’s one called dry hop which I guess is a blend of Conan and sach trois. Might give that a go.

 

[ThePaleAleIndian]

Thinking about giving Imperial yeast a try for my next batch. Looks like there are quite a few options that sound like they would work well for this style. Does anyone have experience with these? There’s one called dry hop which I guess is a blend of Conan and sach trois. Might give that a go.

Never used their products myself as they are tough to find in my area, although I would certainly like to. I've heard very good things about them. The Brulosophy guys seem to use their products often. Basic Brewing did an interview with them as well, which I enjoyed. I have contacted IOY with questions and they are very responsive and helpful. Kind of like the customer service Wyeast used to have before they started giving homebrewers the cold shoulder.

 

[TheHairyHop]

Thinking about giving Imperial yeast a try for my next batch. Looks like there are quite a few options that sound like they would work well for this style. Does anyone have experience with these? There’s one called dry hop which I guess is a blend of Conan and sach trois. Might give that a go.

I have an Idaho 7 IPA on that yeast right now

 

[rappinduke]

I have an Idaho 7 IPA on that yeast right now

Nice, let us know what you think once you get it in the glass. I just ordered a pack from morebeer. Gonna throw it in the next IPA I brew.

 

[MaCheFai]

What final ph are you guys targeting?

 

[SanPancho]

My worry with doing this in a carboy has always been that I already have a ton of hop material in there by 4-6 points left. So to avoid clogging the works I would have to cold crash the carboy. At that point though, using a blend of yeasts I'm not sure which one would reactivate first and what flavors would result. Meh, maybe the last 4-6 points wouldn't make significant flavors though, I don't know. Just thinking out loud.

I would love to try it with a "neat" 1318 beer or something. Never have though.

Platics can take up to 2-3-4 psi. I can never leave the hops behind when i ferment in kegs, so this is the only way i don’t wind up with tons of sludge. Clear carboy, pressure transfer.

But you could transfer over early into a keg to spund id think. Or put a bit of sughar in keg and transfer onto it. Should still have less sludge without crashing.