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

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leesmith said:
I’d like to hear about it.

Would be interested about using it to time spunding instead of taking a sample.
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I attached a typical looking “tilt-gram”, just using google sheets, the Tilt exports if you maintain a WiFi connection.

Absolute values may not perfectly match as the Tilt can accumulate junk on it, throwing it off a bit. Within a point or 2 though.

For dry hopping, I like seeing an inflection in the ferm profile (for example between 3/27 and 3/28 in attached pic). This lets you know that fermentation is winding down. Perhaps that’s enough for you to know to rack/spund?

I find it also helps me (manually) regulate temps in my ferm chamber (don’t typically use a thermowell). Also provides peace of mind with slower fermentations. I had a recent issue where a Begian Quad spit up a ton of yeast/krausen and then took 12 days to finish, I could see that gravity dropping was still occurring all the way through.
 

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isomerization said:
For dry hopping, I like seeing an inflection in the ferm profile (for example between 3/27 and 3/28 in attached pic). This lets you know that fermentation is winding down. Perhaps that’s enough for you to know to rack/spund?
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The "inflection"....basically the yeast's last ditch effort to finish out? I'd assume your basing this observation in part on your history with the yeast....knowing where it will end up?

isomerization said:
I find it also helps me (manually) regulate temps in my ferm chamber (don’t typically use a thermowell). Also provides peace of mind with slower fermentations. I had a recent issue where a Begian Quad spit up a ton of yeast/krausen and then took 12 days to finish, I could see that gravity dropping was still occurring all the way through.
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This would be to know were gravity is in relation to temp and then you can manually increase temp to help it finish out?
 
leesmith said:
The "inflection"....basically the yeast's last ditch effort to finish out? I'd assume your basing this observation in part on your history with the yeast....knowing where it will end up?
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Yes and no. The utility of the TILT is that I don’t need any prior knowledge. If you look at the slope of fermentation (basically take 2 points and draw a straight line), you will see when it starts to go more horizontal.
 
isomerization said:
Yes and no. The utility of the TILT is that I don’t need any prior knowledge. If you look at the slope of fermentation (basically take 2 points and draw a straight line), you will see when it starts to go more horizontal.
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Instead of a graph will it crate a table or a list of the SG points as they change?
 
leesmith said:
Instead of a graph will it crate a table or a list of the SG points as they change?
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Absolutely, every data point is in a table format in a separate sheet. You can delete on the fly if you have an outlier as well.
 
Split batch update:

Added dry hops (1 oz Amarillo, 0.6 oz Cryo Citra to each 1 gal fermenter) along with 0.09g of WB-06 to batch #3 (has the Tilt, pic attached). Bumped temp up to 67F.

@leesmith you can see in the image, the inflection I was talking about, fermentation slowed but continued for another 2-3 points over almost a day. Currently at 1.012 according to Tilt, but didn’t check with a hydrometer. No readings on other batches, but air lock activity was slow to nonexistent.
 

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So right in that area would be the spunding zone?
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I looked at Google sheets also.
There is a feature that allows you to set a notification when somebody edits a shared sheet.

I wonder if that can be leveraged with this application...would the Tilt be considered a user as it automatically updates the sheet?

Anyways...can’t wait to hear how these beers turn out.
 
Yes, that’s exactly the area I was thinking of for your application.

Interesting idea on the notifications, the Tilt sends data every 15 min. Realistically, you’re probably better off just checking in when you can actually do something physically to your beer.
 
Question on under pitching -

I normally use the Brewers friend yeast calculator. For an iPA (1.065ish), I generally use the 'pro Brewer 1.0' setting as a guideline. How much should I under pitch to try to pull more esters? Should I use the .75 setting, or reduce by a certain percentage?
 
It’s pretty yeast strain and yeast health dependent. I think you’d need a microscope to really fine tune it or use the exact same timing and method for the exact same beer over and over and over again.

Yeast health is pretty critical to the whole process and you’re much more likely to run into bad results under pitching than with over pitching.

Plus with dry yeast you have almost no clue as to how many yeast cells you’re working with.

Kimmich pitches Conan really low. Something like .4 I believe. Jeff Erway at La Cumbre pitches Cal ale at the same rate.
 
It's not as simple as underpitch=esters, overpitch=no esters. For instance Cloudwater have gone from 8 million cells per ml in the 2015 version of their DIPA v3 to 24 million cells/ml - but they're paying a lot more attention to yeast health in terms of nutrients, oxygen etc, having a diacetyle rest earlier and warmer and so on.
 
Just added 1 gram of T-58 to a Pale Ale I’m fermenting with yeast harvested from some HF cans. Gravity was just around 1.024ish I think. Added 1oz of hops at the same time as well. Never actually tried the staggered pitch so interested to see what happens. It’s a bit of an experiment anyways with some random newish Euro aroma hops. Ariana, Calista, and Styrian Dragon.
 
butter08 said:
Has anyone looked into isolating wine yeasts for the mystery yeast? I would suggest lalvin qa23 or uvaferm 228.
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Given the nature wine yeasts there's only a couple it could be. You'd basically be looking at any killer neutral or sensitive yeast. 71B would be one of the only options.
 
butter08 said:
Has anyone looked into isolating wine yeasts for the mystery yeast? I would suggest lalvin qa23 or uvaferm 228.
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Well at present we don't have the access to PCR machines that would allow further work on this. But you have to apply Occam's razor and eliminate Fermentis F-2 first, given that the other yeasts appear to be yeasts that Fermentis market to brewers. Or at least, the yeast that were extracted from Julius at that one particular point in time.

We know Lallemand describe CBC-1 as a champagne yeast, and one would assume that F-2 is probably a wine yeast too. So I'd check that out first before trying to complicate things - and in any case wine yeasts are pretty tightly related so it may not be easy to distinguish them using this particular test.

Also for all the hype that QA23 attracted a couple of years ago the reality is that it doesn't seem to make that much difference in beer.

Also if you're only using F-2 for conditioning then it doesn't really matter if it's killer or not, arguably it's a positive if it is.
 
isomerization said:
Split batch update:

Added dry hops (1 oz Amarillo, 0.6 oz Cryo Citra to each 1 gal fermenter) along with 0.09g of WB-06 to batch #3 (has the Tilt, pic attached). Bumped temp up to 67F.

@leesmith you can see in the image, the inflection I was talking about, fermentation slowed but continued for another 2-3 points over almost a day. Currently at 1.012 according to Tilt, but didn’t check with a hydrometer. No readings on other batches, but air lock activity was slow to nonexistent.
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What's the latest and greatest?
 
Beers are bottled and carbing, was a giant mess (pic attached), so hopefully this yields something of value before oxidation sets in (fingers crossed).

Final stats (-1 correction for this hydrometer):

1) 1318/NEEPAH blend, FG = 1.020 (edited upon 2nd look)
2) S-04/T-58/WB-06, FG = 1.014
3) S-04/T-58/late pitch of WB-06, FG = 1.015
4) S-04/T-58, FG = 1.014
5) S-04, FG = 1.016

I could easily tell tthe 1318/NEEPAH blend apart from the S-04 based variants, more sweetness, but the hop profile was masked. It was hard to tell any major differences across the other batches.

Holding off on any further "analysis" until I can taste the different batches...
 

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isomerization said:
Beers are bottled and carbing, was a giant mess (pic attached), so hopefully this yields something of value before oxidation sets in (fingers crossed).

Final stats (-1 correction for this hydrometer):

1) 1318/NEEPAH blend, FG = 1.020 (edited upon 2nd look)
2) S-04/T-58/WB-06, FG = 1.014
3) S-04/T-58/late pitch of WB-06, FG = 1.015
4) S-04/T-58, FG = 1.014
5) S-04, FG = 1.016

I could easily tell tthe 1318/NEEPAH blend apart from the S-04 based variants, more sweetness, but the hop profile was masked. It was hard to tell any major differences across the other batches.

Holding off on any further "analysis" until I can taste the different batches...
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Interesting how the FGs of the different S04 variations ended up. I'm surprised that the S04/T58 blend finished 2 points lower than S04 alone. This data supports your hypothesis that WB06 late additions should not result significantly higher attenuation. Do you think it's meaningful to read into 1-2 point differences or is it all within a margin error and we should conclude that the different blends finished at statistically the same FG?
 
RTE said:
Interesting how the FGs of the different S04 variations ended up. I'm surprised that the S04/T58 blend finished 2 points lower than S04 alone. This data supports your hypothesis that WB06 late additions should not result significantly higher attenuation. Do you think it's meaningful to read into 1-2 point differences or is it all within a margin error and we should conclude that the different blends finished at statistically the same FG?
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I don’t think the late pitch changed much (at least gravity wise), as the 3 blend copitch ended up very close. I would agree that the FG values are so close that it’s hard to conclude anything.

I don’t know if the small volume affected things? Or the ferm temp? Not sure what to think at this point.
 
A finishing hydrometer is very useful for this kind of thing.

I certainly wouldn't read too much into 1.015 +/-0.001 with a normal hydrometer. Something to watch out for in future, but within the margin of error.
 
Northern_Brewer said:
A finishing hydrometer is very useful for this kind of thing.

I certainly wouldn't read too much into 1.015 +/-0.001 with a normal hydrometer. Something to watch out for in future, but within the margin of error.
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It is indeed a finishing hydrometer.
 
Interesting enough, the Trinity recipe does say expected FG = 1.019 with a similar OG as my recipe and a slightly higher 156F mash temp.
 
Fair enough - they're not that common here, they're almost impossible to find for some reason. OK, that does give a bit more confidence - but it is still a minimal difference.
 
WB-06 is Diastaticus. I can guarantee you will have bottle bombs on your hands.

If you can spare bottles containing this yeast try opening ones at weekly intervals and gravity check. Don’t be surprised if you hit 85%+ attenuation.
 
I’m guessing your OG was around 1.066? Mash around 155?

I can see those getting down to 1.008-9 if stored non-chilled.
 
StinkyBeer said:
WB-06 is Diastaticus. I can guarantee you will have bottle bombs on your hands.

If you can spare bottles containing this yeast try opening ones at weekly intervals and gravity check. Don’t be surprised if you hit 85%+ attenuation.
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It’s certainly a possibility. I’m not sure if it’s a foregone conclusion that they will keep attenuating though.

Only 2 of the 5 batches have WB-06 in them, and they are stored separately in a container. I’m cold storing all of them once carbonated, but I think I will keep a few bottles of the WB-06 at room temp, for science.
 
I recently did a 92/4/4 mix of M36/T58/Wb06. I had 2 bottle bombs, which I've never had before. I didn't put it together until reading these posts.

So, there's a small data point for you.
 
This brings us back to early speculations of this thread. CBC1 being used for conditioning (carbonation) and/or packaging. For those just tuning in CBC1 is a 'killer strain' that would prevent other yeast from functioning.

CBC1 could be incorporated at canning to avoid attenuation in the can after purchase while they're still naturally carbonating with the WB06 and T58 is suspension at the tail end of fermentation.

OR

CBC1 is used for carbonating/conditioning with the added benefit of preventing attenuation in the can.

..I'm guessing the second option. But who the hell knows. If you get bottle bombs maybe cbc1 at bottling is the answer.
 
That’s the second hoppy beer they’ve done with some hefe yeast. I believe they did a colab with Cloudwater where they split a batch and did two different ferments and blended them back. They’re not trying to hide the Hefe yeast character though.
 
been watching this thread for a little while. just noticed that Treehouse released Spring today but the description is interesting. the mention using a house yeast and coaxing esters. it seem like they are referring to a single strain.

SPRING (Tree House Double IPA - 7.9% ABV) - Spring is a Tree House Double IPA brewed with the spirit and feeling of renewal that comes with each New England Spring! A simple grist of 2-Row and Dextrin malt is utilized to create a beer that is glowing yellow and visually appealing. Spring is crafted with our house yeast, coaxed to be slightly less estery to allow the individual hop character to shine in conjunction with subtle but prevalent fruity esters of peach & pineapple. We utilize extreme levels of hop dosing in both the kettle and dry hop for Spring - more than is typical of our extra kettle & dry hopped double IPA’s - to create a beer that is rich with fruity hop oils and and intense disposition that coats the palate. The predominant flavor profile is overripe tropical fruit, akin to a fresh pressed juice with guava, mango, papaya, passionfruit, and citrus. It is assertive but not overbearing, gentle yet flavor-saturated. It is a beer we are excited to offer you as we enter the season of renewal.
 

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