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

[troxerX]

Fair enough, I'll def be joining. Been experimenting with copitching but havent had any cutting edge results.
I think we also need to focus more on how to retain esters in our worts. They are super volatile. I recently read and article that belgium brewers take the beer off the yeast as soon as possible in order to retain yeast esters as old yeasts absorb them. I wonder how this ties in with conditioning.
Especially considering these beers have tons of hops and enzymes that cause hop creep it seems tricky to get the beer off the yeast early as to prevent diacetyl from forming. Conditioning the beer with another yeast seems to me the answer to take care of the hop creep problem.
Unless they cheat and use ALDC

"One wort order" its a good one, made me laugh.

Found this on esters (probably posted in this thread already

“Ester levels in the styles that require them can be more easily controlled by increasing the fermentation temperature or by selecting a yeast strain known for higher ester production. One method of increasing ester levels that is not appropriate is depriving yeast of oxygen in the initial aerobic stage of fermentation” also “Late aeration can actually result in lower ester levels in the finished beer”.

https://www.morebeer.com/articles/lifeofayeast

I recall reading another site earlier (can’t find it now) where they recommended not worrying about trying to retain the esters but instead putting all efforts to ensure they were overproduced so that even with the volatile losses you still had a good amount remaining in suspension. This same place, if I’m not mistaken also mentioned that a higher gravity also helped retain more esters. The higher gravity part seems logical but not sure about the rest since some esters when exceeding their threshold can become a defect (solvent like taste) and this approach of overproducing seems to be difficult to measure if not impossible w/o expensive lab equipment (any mistake could ruin your brew)

 

[couchsending]

I bought some cans of EQ when I was in Minnesota in early July. One 4 pack (the 4.8% pale ale) was quite tasty, the rest of them were straight up trash. Two of the brands were incredibly oxidized and the other one tasted like rotting melons. Supposedly this rotting melon thing is something a lot of their beers have as of late.

I was so stoked to try them and couldn’t have been more disappointed. Literally one of the worst beer purchases I’ve made in a while. Supposedly they’ve had some major QC issues as of late?? I would be very hesitant to buy their stuff if I saw it again. Wouldn’t surprise me if they’re sending stuff out to far off markets that they know has QC issues.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

How does a strain then take over across time? Yeast shouldn’t be growing in a can right?

Flip the question - you could be seeing differential death, different strains dying quicker or slower after packaging. So it's not so much one strain taking over as the other strain failing to survive.

 

[TBryerton]

Not completely on topic, but has anyone tried Equilibrium? They are distributing now and I swear the beers Fluctuation and Particle Physics both have a very Tree House-y biotransformation/ester taste. I could be delusional because I'm too lazy to make the drive to TH but these are the first beers I've tasted that somewhat have a TH house yeast taste to them. Fluctuation reminds a lot of Haze (but maybe better...). Maybe it'd be worthwhile to test of can of Eq and see if there is any interesting yeast floating in there? They ship directly PA OH DC NH VT VA and ND.

I liked their earlier beers but a lot of their later stuff became candy sweet. I wasnt a fan and gave up on their beers but I might have to revisit. I never got TH from them back then - I did get esters I associate w/LAIII. Not sure if they use that yeast or not but Im guessing they do in at least some beers.

 

[EstebanPro86]

I bought some cans of EQ when I was in Minnesota in early July. One 4 pack (the 4.8% pale ale) was quite tasty, the rest of them were straight up trash. Two of the brands were incredibly oxidized and the other one tasted like rotting melons. Supposedly this rotting melon thing is something a lot of their beers have as of late.

I was so stoked to try them and couldn’t have been more disappointed. Literally one of the worst beer purchases I’ve made in a while. Supposedly they’ve had some major QC issues as of late?? I would be very hesitant to buy their stuff if I saw it again. Wouldn’t surprise me if they’re sending stuff out to far off markets that they know has QC issues.

So many of their cans have been oxidized lately. Very disappointing

 

[beervoid]

So many of their cans have been oxidized lately. Very disappointing

Last can I had from them I poured, the rotten veggie fruit taste was too much

 

[chieftain]

Last can I had from them I poured, the rotten veggie fruit taste was too much

Can I ask how recent that was? Cause I'm driving through their neck of the woods this weekend, from out of state, and scheduled to pick up a case.

 

[RTE]

There’s a lot of talk on beeradvocate about QA issues at EQ and beer not holding up over time. It sounds like the beers fall off over time. They start with a characteristic “EQ Juice” taste, which is what I keyed in on and then fall off to meh or drain pour worthy (rotting fruit). Also sounds like some cans show up half exploded. I suspect the latter is due to shipping issues. Not that surprising.

I’ve had three beers recently from them and all have been enjoyable but to be safe I better go have one now before they fall off. Personally I’d pick something canned recently, drink it fresh and keep it cold. Not ideal but I wouldn’t skip over something I’m keen on based on Internet forums

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/equilibrium-brewery-2020.631389/page-4

 

[beervoid]

Can I ask how recent that was? Cause I'm driving through their neck of the woods this weekend, from out of state, and scheduled to pick up a case.

A couple of months ago, I think it was 2 weeks old. I'm really fascinated by this phenomenon. I've picked it up in quiet some European IPA's as well.
I'm curious what they are doing process wise to get this sort of flavor. It reminds me a bit of when I dry hopped a KVEIK IPA at 35c or so. Perhaps it forms if the cans reach a certain high temp?

 

[NJGeorge]

Not completely on topic, but has anyone tried Equilibrium? They are distributing now and I swear the beers Fluctuation and Particle Physics both have a very Tree House-y biotransformation/ester taste. I could be delusional because I'm too lazy to make the drive to TH but these are the first beers I've tasted that somewhat have a TH house yeast taste to them. Fluctuation reminds a lot of Haze (but maybe better...). Maybe it'd be worthwhile to test of can of Eq and see if there is any interesting yeast floating in there? They ship directly PA OH DC NH VT VA and ND.

I’ve been saying this for a long time! Nate has even visited them along time ago. Pic on insta. They are similar but not exact. A starter I made with dregs had very strong banana. Has any EQ been tested? If not, let me know and I’ll send a can. Edit- didn’t see @Clyde McCoy has a can. If you need a new one let me know.

 

[NJGeorge]

I think S-04 + T-58 is a good starting point.

I’ve done a bunch a beers with this combo with various percentages. Pitched T58 with initial pitch of s04, post pitch T58 12 hours, 24, and even 36 hours. Made good beers but not exactly TH. One with Simcoe hops was close and when the beers were fresh they reminded me a bit of TH. As discussed earlier here, maybe hop selection plays a role with the esters produced. These were however low gravity beers I made. Also, back then I didn’t have the best fermentation temp control. I think high gravity will get more esters. All the TH beers that have strong esters are 6.8 - 8.6%.

 

[Dog House Brew]

I'm finding that when I find some of the beers in my area that I like, they are never consistent. I have very few decent hazy ipa beers hear. No TH, EQ, OH, nothing of the sort. Most are huge macro brands, so they have their QC down. We all know how just a touch of oxidation kills this style. I hope they get it worked out. People are fortunate to get their hands on these.

 

[troxerX]

On another subject... I probably found that secret substance TH may be adding to their beer, has someone seen Nate’s profile in BA??? it says “I’m hopelessly Addicted to Mangos”, maybe they are adding mango extract or dried mango powder to all their brews??? have someone looked into that already?

 

[couchsending]

They’re definitely not adding mango extract to their beers

 

[NJGeorge]

Or just using yeast and hops in a way to evoke mango.
Has anyone looked into using valine and or L leucine?

 

[TBryerton]

Saturated has homemade mango simple syrup. Core beers do not have any type of extract.

 

[troxerX]

Got it, just out of curiosity, has someone already tried brewing their CB&B hoppy thing recipe with any of the yeast combos we’ve been testing here? (S04/T-58/WB06/CBC-1)

 

[NJGeorge]

So I made a couple starters from EQ beers. @Clyde McCoy i think you need to test that can you have. If it’s old let me know and I’ll send you a can I have. The starter is straight up hefe. They have to be doing something similar to TH yeast wise. Not exact but similar. They have also mentioned they use a yeast blend.

 

[troxerX]

probably posted here already, if not, these may have been flying under the radar then... lots of good reading..

http://thirdleapbrew.com/technical/ward-labs-mineral-analysis-of-tree-house-julius/
http://thirdleapbrew.com/technical/ward-labs-mineral-analysis-of-tree-house-julius-again/
http://thirdleapbrew.com/technical/beverage-analytics-of-tree-house-julius/

 

[troxerX]

Report on my 3 batches blending experiment —

Batch 1

Batches 2 and 3

Final Product!! - not fully carbonated yet, it’s been only 1 week into bottle conditioning and flavor development has been out of this world!, starts with a very minuscule acidity, followed by tangerine, caramel and tangy orange rind, with a very restrained rounded/consistent bitterness and then finishing with bubblegum and melon with bubblegum sticking to your palate for an hour after drinking this.. haze and color are sick, haze is solid and permanent, and the closest I could ever dream to the reported 10.8 SRM for Julius.. and we are talking about an almost flat beer right now LOL

Reported color for Julius (10.8 SRM) — compare for yourself—

I knew going into this that final gravities and ABV will be a difficult task to estimate and hit, this one finished higher than anticipated at 20 points and compounded ABV is around 8% so I will guess it will be a very close replicate to King Julius instead of Julius (have tried Julius several times but not KJ). Between boil and dry hopping, hops went into this brew a total of 7 times in less than 18 days (sincerely I could have done even more) and I was brewing a batch basically every weekend LOL so I can bet any professional brewer could do this way much faster. This brew is a hop bomb but still surprisingly with a very restrained bitterness. Now it’s up to the next few (3-5) weeks to see how this brew develops. Can’t wait to see how this tastes when it’s fully conditioned!

I was growing skeptical at each step as this brew seemed muted in many ways but once it got into the bottle all these layers of complexity exploded. Like @Northern_Brewer mentioned before, bottle/cask conditioning is key for flavor development. I didn’t pursue krausening at this time as that would have caused de-gassing/overflowing issues when bottling. Yeast activity was dead on the bones at bottling so it will take time for the yeast to rise up and finish. Therefore, I still believe either krausening (or high yeast activity) to that matter are the key for speedy conditioning so this type of blended brews can be turned around quickly. Now the ultimate test is up to time with hopes that phenolics don’t take over as this bomb conditions.

 

[SanPancho]

for the love of god man put some f2 or cbc in there. if you don’t itll potentially keep changing. its like adding a X factor at the very end. No bueno.

 

[troxerX]

Agreed mi hermano!, LOL por eso le añadí suficiente CBC-1 pero.... as far as I can tell current evidence shows that none of them kill the other yeasts since the guys still see T-58/WB-06 on their can dregs swimming along side CBC/F2 (which really makes no sense if they are true killers) so I’m just overly cautious....

 

[SanPancho]

Fermentis states it’s killer. The issue is that killer is bit of misnomer. (As Ive learned). It can kill, or just suppress/slow. We use f2 and it definitely stops the wb from turning things into phenol bombs. I don’t plate since we don’t package, so it’s based on sensory only, but no phenolics. Pretty much no gravity change either. So whether it kills or just suppresses i cant say, but the beer is stable.

 

[SanPancho]

Wheres the Kickstarter for a homebrew sized flash pasteurizer anyways?

 

[troxerX]

Agreed, ‘suppression’ is a better word, LOL that’s my next project but want to keep it under wraps...

 

[suregork]

Did some interdelta fingerprints (delta12/delta21 and Phusion polymerase) of some Escarpment and White Labs strains at work today. I'm not sure if they are of any help in IDing the strains . One observation is that the fingerprints of WB06, WLP570 and WLP644 are identical (and genome data suggests they are very close). The UK ale strains also have quite similar profiles, they can be quite difficult to tell apart on an agarose gel (these are run on a ZAG capillary electrophoresis device). The bands at 75bp and 20kbp are markers added to each sample. Clyde McCoy, what polymerase and extension time are you running? Taq and 30s? You barely have any bands above ~500-700 bp. If you extend to one minute you could better range.

I haven't followed this thread very closely, but it seems most of the focus has been on dry strains. Do we know they certainly use dry strains? Based on the fingerprints it could be WLP644 (POF- is the key here) and almost any UK ale strain. If one wants to stick to S-04 or similar, maybe a dark horse could be WLP540 (i.e. the Rochefort strain) which is closely related. Wasn't there some interview posted where Rochefort 8 was named as an "a-ha beer".

 

[TyGent]

Did some interdelta fingerprints (delta12/delta21 and Phusion polymerase) of some Escarpment and White Labs strains at work today. I'm not sure if they are of any help in IDing the strains . One observation is that the fingerprints of WB06, WLP570 and WLP644 are identical (and genome data suggests they are very close). The UK ale strains also have quite similar profiles, they can be quite difficult to tell apart on an agarose gel (these are run on a ZAG capillary electrophoresis device). The bands at 75bp and 20kbp are markers added to each sample. Clyde McCoy, what polymerase and extension time are you running? Taq and 30s? You barely have any bands above ~500-700 bp. If you extend to one minute you could better range.
View attachment 702224
I haven't followed this thread very closely, but it seems most of the focus has been on dry strains. Do we know they certainly use dry strains? Based on the fingerprints it could be WLP644 (POF- is the key here) and almost any UK ale strain. If one wants to stick to S-04 or similar, maybe a dark horse could be WLP540 (i.e. the Rochefort strain) which is closely related. Wasn't there some interview posted where Rochefort 8 was named as an "a-ha beer".

Yes. Here is the link. Nate Lanier of Tree House Brewing Co.

 

[beervoid]

I recall people reporting sulfur from tree house yeast dregs and possible isolated starters?
Wlp570 produces sulfur.

 

[beervoid]

Report on my 3 batches blending experiment —

Batch 1
View attachment 702115

Batches 2 and 3
View attachment 702116

Final Product!! - not fully carbonated yet, it’s been only 1 week into bottle conditioning and flavor development has been out of this world!, starts with a very minuscule acidity, followed by tangerine, caramel and tangy orange rind, with a very restrained rounded/consistent bitterness and then finishing with bubblegum and melon with bubblegum sticking to your palate for an hour after drinking this.. haze and color are sick, haze is solid and permanent, and the closest I could ever dream to the reported 10.8 SRM for Julius.. and we are talking about an almost flat beer right now LOL

View attachment 702117

Reported color for Julius (10.8 SRM) — compare for yourself—
View attachment 702121

I knew going into this that final gravities and ABV will be a difficult task to estimate and hit, this one finished higher than anticipated at 20 points and compounded ABV is around 8% so I will guess it will be a very close replicate to King Julius instead of Julius (have tried Julius several times but not KJ). Between boil and dry hopping, hops went into this brew a total of 7 times in less than 18 days (sincerely I could have done even more) and I was brewing a batch basically every weekend LOL so I can bet any professional brewer could do this way much faster. This brew is a hop bomb but still surprisingly with a very restrained bitterness. Now it’s up to the next few (3-5) weeks to see how this brew develops. Can’t wait to see how this tastes when it’s fully conditioned!

I was growing skeptical at each step as this brew seemed muted in many ways but once it got into the bottle all these layers of complexity exploded. Like @Northern_Brewer mentioned before, bottle/cask conditioning is key for flavor development. I didn’t pursue krausening at this time as that would have caused de-gassing/overflowing issues when bottling. Yeast activity was dead on the bones at bottling so it will take time for the yeast to rise up and finish. Therefore, I still believe either krausening (or high yeast activity) to that matter are the key for speedy conditioning so this type of blended brews can be turned around quickly. Now the ultimate test is up to time with hopes that phenolics don’t take over as this bomb conditions.

Have you shared the recipe on this? In particular the yeast blends you tried in those batches?

 

[Clyde McCoy]

Did some interdelta fingerprints (delta12/delta21 and Phusion polymerase) of some Escarpment and White Labs strains at work today. I'm not sure if they are of any help in IDing the strains . One observation is that the fingerprints of WB06, WLP570 and WLP644 are identical (and genome data suggests they are very close). The UK ale strains also have quite similar profiles, they can be quite difficult to tell apart on an agarose gel (these are run on a ZAG capillary electrophoresis device). The bands at 75bp and 20kbp are markers added to each sample. Clyde McCoy, what polymerase and extension time are you running? Taq and 30s? You barely have any bands above ~500-700 bp. If you extend to one minute you could better range.
View attachment 702224
I haven't followed this thread very closely, but it seems most of the focus has been on dry strains. Do we know they certainly use dry strains? Based on the fingerprints it could be WLP644 (POF- is the key here) and almost any UK ale strain. If one wants to stick to S-04 or similar, maybe a dark horse could be WLP540 (i.e. the Rochefort strain) which is closely related. Wasn't there some interview posted where Rochefort 8 was named as an "a-ha beer".

Cycling conditions in (Xufre et al., Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology 2010): "After initial denaturation (95C for 4 min), the reaction mixture was cycled 35 times using the following program: 95C for 30 s, 52C for 30 s, 72C for 90 s with a final extension at 72C for 10 min". delta2/12 primers. Yes, Taq (our cheapest DNA pol). I was using a resuspended isolated colony as input.

I did not optimize cycling conditions. On some of my S-04 gels you can see a faint amplicon ~1450 bp. S-04 and T-58 showed similar banding profiles to colonies from Tree House beers. WB-06 was a bit more ambiguous as amplification tended to be only small fragments.

S-04 compared to Tree House colonies:

T-58 compared to Tree House colonies:

Unfortunately I haven't had time to work on this recently.

 

[NJGeorge]

I recall people reporting sulfur from tree house yeast dregs and possible isolated starters?
Wlp570 produces sulfur.

I got sulfur from Eureka cans last year but who knows what yeast is in that.

 

[echoALEia]

Something I thought about that hasn’t been tried yet (or at least I think).

When I pitch t58 and wb06 together by themselves with plenty of each, I don’t get their off putting phenols, but a nice bready aroma. When I underpitch s04, I get those nice tangerine/fruity aromas.

If the yeast blend people are correct, maybe we have been approaching it wrong in this entire thread. Maybe the majority of it should be t58 and wb06 and the s04 should be the underpitched of the three.

Thoughts?

 

[beervoid]

Something I thought about that hasn’t been tried yet (or at least I think).

When I pitch t58 and wb06 together by themselves with plenty of each, I don’t get their off putting phenols, but a nice bready aroma. When I underpitch s04, I get those nice tangerine/fruity aromas.

If the yeast blend people are correct, maybe we have been approaching it wrong in this entire thread. Maybe the majority of it should be t58 and wb06 and the s04 should be the underpitched of the three.

Thoughts?

Makes sense imho as underpitching promotes esters.

 

[beervoid]

So my first go at blending. 4 19 gal batches.
I used the new verdant strain. A batch with s04 and a batch with s-04 + 2.3gr (20%) t58.
All fermented at 18c and rise to 22c for d-rest on day 4.

The spice of of the t58 was through the roof on day 7. When opening the fv for dryhopping I got a full on belgian spice scent in my face.
Few days later post dry hopping it has subdued.

I noticed that s-04 on itself comes across belgiany, I would say bubblegum for sure. Looking at fermentis spec sheets it is high in bubblegum esters. When smelling it compared to the verdant yeast (1318 like yeast) the verdant came off way more tropical fruity on the nose. I felt like they both represented a part of what the tree house beers have. Especially that bubblegum from s04.

Decided to blend the verdant with the s-04 batch only to see how it would end up. 50/50 blend.
Will be reporting back after the beers have had some time to mellow out as they where all still very green.
The batch with t58 was def my least favorite. The batch with verdant my most favorite, but I can see how perhaps blending some of that s-04 character in could get that bubblegum nose we find in a tree house beer.

An afterthought. I was really surprised how much the esters from the t58 batch went down after dry hopping. I mean like 1 day after opening and purging the headspace.
This leads me to believe that dry hopping and purging headspace blows off alot of yeast esters. I therefore am thinking to ferment some batch concentrating on yeast esters only and never open this for dryhopping so that when blending it we keep most of the yeast derived esters.

 

[echoALEia]

Your results with the t58 blend make me think more that yeast and wb06 shouldn’t be underpitched. I’ll be setting aside 5 gallons of a batch I’m doing today and doing a blend of the 3 with s04 only being underpitched

 

[TBryerton]

I’ve been getting a lot less of that distinct TH flavor in the last couple of batches. I’ve also had those delivered via the mail so maybe that plays into it. I got a fresh batch yesterday delivered straight from the brewery so I’m curious if it’s different. Or maybe it’s just my taste buds.

 

[beervoid]

Your results with the t58 blend make me think more that yeast and wb06 shouldn’t be underpitched. I’ll be setting aside 5 gallons of a batch I’m doing today and doing a blend of the 3 with s04 only being underpitched

How would you calculate pitch size? I mean if you pitch 1 bag of each yeast plus half a bag s04 thats still an overpitch total yeast load.

Purely from this perspective as yeast compete with each other over the sugar, I'd imagine they would get stressed and throw more esters. Here is where blending comes in imho.

 

[NJGeorge]

I’ve been getting a lot less of that distinct TH flavor in the last couple of batches. I’ve also had those delivered via the mail so maybe that plays into it. I got a fresh batch yesterday delivered straight from the brewery so I’m curious if it’s different. Or maybe it’s just my taste buds.

Which beers? How long shipping? I kinda agree. Got a recent Julius, Daze and V green. That house yeast is not that strong strong. It’s been a year for me so maybe my tastes have changed

 

[echoALEia]

How would you calculate pitch size? I mean if you pitch 1 bag of each yeast plus half a bag s04 thats still an overpitch total yeast load.

Purely from this perspective as yeast compete with each other over the sugar, I'd imagine they would get stressed and throw more esters. Here is where blending comes in imho.

The short answer is I don’t know haha.

In the past, when I pitched t58 and wb06 together in a 5 gallon batch I used about 11g of each. No phenols, all bready aromas.

When I recently did a single s04 underpitched it was beautiful - super tangerine aroma with a hint of vanilla.

Just pitched the three last night. I’ll post updates soon.

 

[TBryerton]

Which beers? How long shipping? I kinda agree. Got a recent Julius, Daze and V green. That house yeast is not that strong strong. It’s been a year for me so maybe my tastes have changed

A few days. The first two beers from the hand delivered package are bursting with flavor.

Ever notice the coloring in the foam from their beers with house yeast? This pic is from Juice Project, which is amazing.