Here is an excellent podcast with Chris White, of White Labs.
He talks extensively about yeast blends.
My own experience is that it’s a crap shoot.
The only reason I ever mix yeasts is if I don’t have enough of one kind to do the fermentation.
If you’re looking for repeatability, predictability, and repitching through multiple generations, then yeast blends aren’t the optimal solution for you. There are situations where they can be useful, however. In particular, when one yeast has the flavor characteristics you’re looking for, but not the desired fermentation performance (either attenuation or flocculation). I use Windsor plus either Notty or BRY-97 to get the flavor from Windsor with a bit more attenuation, and it seems to work pretty well for what I’m looking for.
When do you add the Notty/Bry-97? After the Windsor stops fermenting or sooner?
I’ve tried waiting to add the second yeast, but I honestly didn’t notice a considerable difference compared to copitching them at the same time. I just pitch them together now for simplicity’s sake
Is the convention wisdom still that Treehouse uses various blends of dry yeast strains in every batch?
I’ve tried Windsor and Notty copitched. The fruit flavors were nice and the beer was quite dry. I prefer slightly less attenuation.
Chris White mentioned that a few home brew supply houses are asking for blended yeast strains for online retail. Most notably, More Beer. And White mentioned there are 100+ craft breweries now pitching blended yeast strains.
I guess it is working quite well for these folks.
i’ve got something with 2x BRY97s and 1x BE256 going right now. i’ll let you know when i taste it
Great!
Brewing a Czech Premium Pils this week. Very tempted to try a blend…Diamond & W-34/70. Or, Diamond and W-2124. It will be two 5 gallon batches, so there is an opportunity for some experimentation.
Or maybe 34/70 & 2124. Who knows? I am willing to “roll the dice” on this one.
Right now I have a biere de champagne or biere brut, whatever we’ve decided to call it, with a mix of S04 and the Duvel strain which is suggested to be Huyghe’s blend or part of it. I don’t know if that is right but the fermentation smell is dead on. Maybe not the best for clarity but it is getting several months of lagering and maybe some clarifier help.
I know of a local brewery using a proprietary blend for their house yeast. They have yeast banked at one of the major yeast players. This was an unintentional blend and the history is extremely spotty on how the yeast made it to the brewery. I was told recently that the major player had a new hire. When building up the strain from their bank the new hire was under the impression this was a single strain. Apparently there was another strain or two picked up along the way. I have their house strain banked up in the freezer here at the house as well. I’d be curious to plate it and see how many different strains are in there. Side note I know nothing about plating and looking at yeast strains under a microscope lol. The thought is this is some mutated kolsch/german ale strain. If they/I were pressed it’s agreed this was probably a derivative of a kolsch strain. It’s a VERY hardy yeast though with a very wide temperature range. It’s fermented in the low 40’s all the way to mid/upper 60’s cleanly. The flocculation characteristics are not good though. It’s a VERY low floccer but performs extremely well on the homebrew scale.