Mixing yeast strains

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cyto

cyto

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Getting ready to start my brewing season, I normally start with a pack of dry yeast then harvest it through the brewing season (Oct-March).
I have a pack of Fermentis Safale US-05 and pack of Danstar Nottingham. I am thinking of mixing both packs together for the first brew and see how it goes. I have a degree in Cell Biology/Chemistry, so I know it will work in theory. I wonder how the brew will come out.
Anyone here tried mixing yeast strains?
 
I am sure it will work. I have read and heard of many people mixing strands. I do not know how the flavor will turn out.
What type of beer are trying to make? I think that would be helpful.

I also was curious- you say your brewing season. Is therr any reason you only brew for 6 months? I am thinking ferm temps?
 
Nate R said:
I am sure it will work. I have read and heard of many people mixing strands. I do not know how the flavor will turn out.
What type of beer are trying to make? I think that would be helpful.

I also was curious- you say your brewing season. Is therr any reason you only brew for 6 months? I am thinking ferm temps?
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As far as the beer type, I will harvest this and use it all season. Dark/brown ales and IPAs.
I live in central Alabama, it us too hot to control the fermentation temperature during half the year.
 
Well, sounds interesting. That stinks about temperature limiting your brew period. There's always the highly expensive rabbit hole of glycol to jump down... lol.
For me, for those styles, i would keep the notty seperate for the dark & brown. But that is me. I bet you will get an interesting flavor.
Please keep us updated!
 
Without researching the spec sheets on both yeasts, it should work. With training in cell biology you are probably aware that some yeast cells are predatory on other cultures and will dominate eventually. One such dry yeast I'm familiar with is Lallemand K1-V1116, a yeast I've used in fermentation of wine must. It has a very high competitive factor and will dominate a fermentation if pitched with another yeast like EC-1118, which is the most common wine yeast found in kit wines.

I don't generally use dry yeasts in beer, but have used both US-05 and especially Nottingham and don't recall either having high competitive factors, but also have never combined them. Be sure to post your results.

Brooo Brother
 
Brooothru said:
Without researching the spec sheets on both yeasts, it should work. With training in cell biology you are probably aware that some yeast cells are predatory on other cultures and will dominate eventually. One such dry yeast I'm familiar with is Lallemand K1-V1116, a yeast I've used in fermentation of wine must. It has a very high competitive factor and will dominate a fermentation if pitched with another yeast like EC-1118, which is the most common wine yeast found in kit wines.

I don't generally use dry yeasts in beer, but have used both US-05 and especially Nottingham and don't recall either having high competitive factors, but also have never combined them. Be sure to post your results.

Brooo Brother
Click to expand...
Brooothru said:
Without researching the spec sheets on both yeasts, it should work. With training in cell biology you are probably aware that some yeast cells are predatory on other cultures and will dominate eventually. One such dry yeast I'm familiar with is Lallemand K1-V1116, a yeast I've used in fermentation of wine must. It has a very high competitive factor and will dominate a fermentation if pitched with another yeast like EC-1118, which is the most common wine yeast found in kit wines.

I don't generally use dry yeasts in beer, but have used both US-05 and especially Nottingham and don't recall either having high competitive factors, but also have never combined them. Be sure to post your results.

Brooo Brother
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I was thinking if that happened one strain would just dominate the batch. I am mainly curious to see how it works as I harvest it.
 
cyto said:
I was thinking if that happened one strain would just dominate the batch. I am mainly curious to see how it works as I harvest it.
Click to expand...
Please keep tasting notes and share- i can only assume it will change batch to batch. I would be interested/ concerned about the ipa hop profiles if you pitch from an ipa to a brown.
 
I would guess that the yeast that flocculates the best would dominate over time. You could also brew your first two beers with each pack individually and then you have pure yeast cakes of each and co pitch your third batch while retaining the two original yeasts if the co pitch does not work out.
 
cyto said:
I have a catalyst fermenter, and I pour off the supernatant after it settles, which leaves the yeast relatively free of hops etc. I don't wash yeast.
Click to expand...

Exactly what I do, and am preparing to do after I finish this post. I have a West Coast IPA that's been crashing for about seven days in the Unitank, now fully carbed with virtually no trub and/or yeast in the settled, degassed sample taken yesterday.

For this beer I transferred out of the boil vessel (after whirlpool and :45 min. settling) into the sealed fermenter. I crashed down to 45F (2 psi head pressure), waited overnight, dumped 1 1/2 L of gunk till I saw clear wort in the bottom sight glass, and then pitched approximately 800 ml of decanted slurry with one of Jaybird's yeast brinks. Oxygenated through the carb stone and set temperature to free-rise to 62F.

It took almost 3 days before seeing sustained activity through the blow-off line, but within the next three days it had reached -5 points of a FFT-predicted final gravity. Attached the spunding valve set to 1 atm and raised the temperature to 69F.

It took about 4 days to reach 15 psig and another three days of stabilized FG readings to confirm completion. Yeast was already collecting in the sight glass, so I started a 3F/day temperature reduction down to 38F. One more test sample yesterday confirmed the FG, clarity, carb level and absence of diacetyl. Tasted darn good as well.

You'll have to excuse me now as I have some beer to keg and a liter or two of trub-free yeast to harvest. This batch went as smoothly as any I have ever done, soup to nuts. I hit every one of my numbers and feel like I've finally got my system, process and procedures dialed in. It's been worth the investment of time and $$$$ to get here, after 30+ years of trying.

Brooo Brother
 
I don't know why this would be a problem. You should expect to get a beer that is around the attenuation of whichever has higher numbers. Despite people repeating it, brewing yeast are not so competitive that they can eliminate other brewing yeast in the same wort. You're going to end up with a mix of the two somewhere around 50/50 assuming you harvest from the trub all the way through to the bottom so you're getting the full range of their flocculation.
 
Brooothru said:
Without researching the spec sheets on both yeasts, it should work. With training in cell biology you are probably aware that some yeast cells are predatory on other cultures and will dominate eventually. One such dry yeast I'm familiar with is Lallemand K1-V1116, a yeast I've used in fermentation of wine must. It has a very high competitive factor and will dominate a fermentation if pitched with another yeast like EC-1118, which is the most common wine yeast found in kit wines.

I don't generally use dry yeasts in beer, but have used both US-05 and especially Nottingham and don't recall either having high competitive factors, but also have never combined them. Be sure to post your results.
Click to expand...

K1-1116 is a killer strain. US-05 and Nottingham (and in fact, any of the strains commonly used for beer) are not. Between US-05 and Nottingham, one would probably eventually (many generations downstream) outcompete the other in the sense of being more successful at growth, but they wouldn't be poisoning each other.
 
As I understand it, Notty already is a mixed strain (not a single strain). Traditional Whitbread or Ringwood by most accounts were originally multi strains, while the major yeast houses offer single strains. For example, WLP has seperate offerings for Whitbread and Whitbread II

WLP085 English Ale Blend is a dual strain mix of WLP002 (Fuller's yeast) and rumored to be WLP006 or WLP007. White Labs won't confirm. I picked up WLP085 at White Labs a couple years ago when I had 30 minutes to do a drive by, and then have a newer batch I got during the vault opening. I like it a lot.

I made a "suicide" by randomly mixing in about 8 English strains. I still have it in the fridge. It had wlo02, wlp85, nottingham, s04, windsor, CBC, Irish, and a couple others that I had in stock. It wasn't good. I did notice that the CBC seemed to have been over powering, and I don't like the taste of CBC. I will redo this with a smaller group of English yeasts that are my "keepers."

Have you tried any of the ultra high temp kviek yeast strains? Seems like bred for your situation...
 
Nottingham is not a mixed strain. I've contacted Lallemand already in the past and asked about their dry Nottingham. It is a single strain yeast.

As for mixing yeast - there is no harm in that. You will get the best of both ( most times ). Nottingham flocculates better and faster than US-05, so if that's a stick point for you, then Notti will do you proper. As VikeMan said above, when re-using the blend over a few generations, one of the original two yeast, will outcompete the other one and in the end, your blend will no longer be a 50/50 blend.
 
VikeMan said:
K1-1116 is a killer strain. US-05 and Nottingham (and in fact, any of the strains commonly used for beer) are not. Between US-05 and Nottingham, one would probably eventually (many generations downstream) outcompete the other in the sense of being more successful at growth, but they wouldn't be poisoning each other.
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Yeah, which I was trying to say, though not so succinctly. I'm guilty of doing that a lot.
 
UPDATE
I just bottled a batch of my Double Chocolate Stout, using Safeale US-05 and Danstar Nottinham.
I put both yeast strains in a starter. For starters I use 32oz of wort collected from a previous batch and frozen. I collect it after the hot break before adding hops.
The batch fermented normally with the temp 65-68F and I got 80% attenuation. OG 1.073- FG 1.014 corrected to 60F. It smelled great, can't wait for aging to taste it.
I harvested the yeast for use in my next batch, which will be 2 weeks.
 
thanks for the update. BTW, this thread kinda reminded me, and pulled out a tube of sake and nottingham yeast mix that's been in my fridge for a year. Maybe 50cc worth from a not scientific mix (I poured in some sake harvested yeast with some notty powder into a cyser, harvested that over 2 generations). Current gen 3 mix is chewing thru a cyser right now
 
does mixing a highly flocculent yeast help a lower flocculation yeast to settle better? For example, could you co pitch S04 to low flocculation yeasts to get them to settle faster?
 
chungyfied said:
does mixing a highly flocculent yeast help a lower flocculation yeast to settle better? For example, could you co pitch S04 to low flocculation yeasts to get them to settle faster?
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Yes. I've done it plenty of times, mostly using Nottingham as the second yeast, as it has high attenuation, it's rather clean and will flocculate well and fast.
 
cyto said:
UPDATE
I just bottled a batch of my Double Chocolate Stout, using Safeale US-05 and Danstar Nottinham.
I put both yeast strains in a starter. For starters I use 32oz of wort collected from a previous batch and frozen. I collect it after the hot break before adding hops.
The batch fermented normally with the temp 65-68F and I got 80% attenuation. OG 1.073- FG 1.014 corrected to 60F. It smelled great, can't wait for aging to taste it.
I harvested the yeast for use in my next batch, which will be 2 weeks.
Click to expand...
How did your beer turn out? I'm thinking of making a stout this weekend using the same 2 yeasts you used.
 
I don't see any advantage of mixing these particular yeasts. Notty Flocs a bit better but mutes the hops and does not stick to the bottom of a bottle very well and us 05 does not flocc as fast, but sticks to the bottom of a bottle better and does not mute hop flavour and aroma.

So if you are after the flocculation, use only notty. If not, use us 05.

Usually, mixed yeasts are mixed on purpose, yeasts that complement each other well.

For example a classic, Windsor and Nottingham. Windsor brings the esters and Nottingham the flocculation.
 
Dem Castles said:
How did your beer turn out? I'm thinking of making a stout this weekend using the same 2 yeasts you used.
Click to expand...
It turned out very good. It is a heavy beer so it needs more aging but I have been making this recipe, with alterations, for 15 years. It always takes 3 months for optimal flavor.
 
Question about one yeast dominating on subsequent generations. I have taken to top cropping as it seems to yield very healthy, clean yeast. If both yeasts are top fermenting would top cropping yield a steady ratio? I saw several references to floculation and this might be a way around that variable.
 
Well compared to harvesting slurry, where a more floculent yeast may have more presence, would top crop yield a similar ratio as the original pitch?
 
TBA said:
Well compared to harvesting slurry, where a more floculent yeast may have more presence, would top crop yield a similar ratio as the original pitch?
Click to expand...


i'd imagine a top crop would have way less? probably get a new batch kicked off, but i'd imagine most of it would just be coagulated protein....which is what causes krausen i believe?
 
I am no expert on this... but i seem to recall some yeasts DO get harvested off the top. There was an English ale featured in either Palmer or Pappazin where i read this...

To the OP:
I still think wether top or bottom cropping, one yeast will eventually become more dominant over the other if i understand it correctly.
But why not try it, see what happens? Make your own 'house' yeast? Lol
 
Top cropping is definately a thing with many English breweries.

Check out this basic brewing podcast on July 24, 2014 - Open Fermentation at Arcadia Brewing

It is a Peter Austin (English guy sometimes credited with starting craft brewing in the UK and reportedly use "Ringwood" multi-strain,) brewery. It's been a while since I've listened to it but they have top cropped hundreds of batches from the same yeast. really a good listen if you want to get some perspective on top cropping.

No idea if top cropping alleviates the "yeast killer" syndrome, which seems to take generations at any rate.

Here's a White Labs presentation on blending yeast strains.

On a previous post, I mentioned WLP085 vault strain as a combination of WLP002 and rumored to be either WLP006 or WLP007. Well, in the White Labs presentation, she uses WLP002 and WLP007 as an example. Methinks that is as close as I going to get for confirmation that WLP085 = 002+007
 
There is a strain sold by I believe Northern Brewer WLP-200 that is a mix of WLP-001 and WLP-002.

As for top cropping, google "Burton Union System", they had "gates" at the top of the fermenter where the yeast from one vat inoculated the next vat.
 
Historically, all beers originally used a pitch of mixed yeast strains. In fact brewers didn’t always know if they would end up with more of a lager or an ale, had a lot to do with the ambient weather temperatures at the time of fermentation. It wasn’t until Carlsberg isolated individual yeast strains that we came to know all the different varieties.
 

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