Strange yeast combo, hear me out...

[AviatorTroy]

Was going to make a Schwartzbier with Kolsch yeast. Saved some from the last batch, and threw it in a growler and made a starter. Fast forward to brew day. After the chill, was ready to pitch the yeast. Went to the back room to retrieve my growler of starter and the lid had blown off, and made a volcano of schmutz all over. Needless to say, i had a perfectly good wort and no starter. So all I had was a packet of Nottingham, so I rehydrated it and pitched.

Here's where it actually gets interesting... The next morning I racked my previous Kolsch batch from secondary and bottled it. Then I dumped the dregs of the small yeast cake from the SECONDARY in the fermenter, in which 12 hours earlier I pitched the Nottingham.

It's been fermenting for 2 weeks at 57F. I picked that temp to possibly suppress the Nottingham a little while still allowing a fairly normal fermentation temp enviornment for the the Kolsch yeast to do it's thing.

It did achieve a small slow kreusen, and I haven't had a chance to take a gravity reading, not too worried about that, I know it will finish fine.

Soooooooo..... What does the collective think of this? What will it taste like? Did I suppress the Nottingham enough to not have the Ale like esters show through? Hoping the Kolsch yeast was able to primarily take over. Hmmmmmm....

 

[hopsalot]

I dont think your yeast are happy at that temp, that is low for Kolsch. Did you use WLP029???

 

[AviatorTroy]

I used Wyeast 2565, and just yesterday I had my wife bump up the temp to 64 to help it finish out. I'm out of town, so I couldn't get a gravity reading on it, but I'm hoping that fermenting low gave it a really clean profile and bumping it up will give a dyactl rest and encourage the yeast to finish up, altho my gut feeling is they are pretty much already there.

I've heard of Nottingham being fermented as low as 55, and I would think Kolsch could hang in there a few degrees below that, so I was hoping that the temp I selected was pretty much at the bottom of the Nottingham envelope but the Kolcsh would be doing most of the work. I can't wait to get home and take a sample!