What would happen if.....
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SamBrewer
Well-Known Member
I know that some belgian beers (like delirium nocturnum) are fermented with different yeast strains. to be honest I don't remember if they use different strains only for primary fermentation or before bottling.
I tried few years ago, I brewed a belgian saison and use a combination of wyeast belgian saison and trappist high gravity. the result of that beer was exactly the same of the other saison brewed using just saison yeast.
SC_Ryan
Well-Known Member
You will essentially have two yeasts working at one time in your beer. They won't mate and combine a hybrid yeast, if that's what your asking but if you mix say a particular yeast for it's flavor contributions + a higher attenuating yeast strain because you want the beer to finish a little lower you could get good results.
reverendj1
Well-Known Member
Judging from a clone I saw (at least for Delerium Tremens, not sure about Nocturnum), they do do it in primary. They way they get away with it is they use two yeasts with different temp ranges. Start with one, before it finishes heat or cool it until the other yeast will take over.
I do not personally have any experience using two yeasts, but my LHBS (and they are generally pretty knowledgeable guys) told me when I was following a recipe with two yeasts that one will just win out, and you won't taste the other. Obviously this is without the temperature control to put one yeast to sleep while the other takes over.
Experiment time!
Topdawg2881
Member
I am in the process of reading the Yeast book by Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff. They have a good section regarding the mixing of yeasts. They mention that there could be benefit to mixing yeasts in one beer. It all depends on what your ultimate end goal is. If your desire is to get a different flavor than it is desirable to add the two strains at the beginning of fermentation. If your goal is to have higher attenuation than you add the higher attenuating or the more alcohol tolerant one closer to the end of fermentation. If you don't have this book yet I highly recommend it as there is tons of great information in here and I have only gotten through about half the book.
It won't technically create a "super strain" (yeast do not reproduce sexually - mutation is the only driver of genetic variability), but it could certainly function effectively like one.
However, yeast strains function differently - one could possibly use up all the oxygen before the other gets to really begin reproducing much, for example - which means that you'll have to experiment quite extensively with not just pitching rates but ratios as well. That's a lot for a single homebrewer to do even with two exact strains in mind, but when you consider the possible combinations of even a handful of strains, it's pretty crazy.
Then there's also the fact that you'll always have to pitch them separately in the correct ratio. This means separate starters, and NO repitching yeast, as the ratio in a finished beer will be different than what you started with - the yeast that is able to reproduce more would become increasingly prominent so that you get less and less of the other strain, until after a few repitches you're practically using only a single strain.
It's not necessarily the exact same (though it's not that it's better or worse, just a BIT different at most), but I think it's much easier to just blend finished beers each fermented with a single strain. That way you can experiment in a glass quite easily - even with more than 2 strains! - to find the ratios you like best. Then you can just blend them on a bigger scale. By keeping the fermentations separate, you'll also be able to repitch all the yeast if you want without running into the issue I described in the previous paragraph.
If you insist on blending strains to ferment anyways, I'd still highly recommend experimenting with blending single-strain batches at first regardless. It MIGHT not be the EXACT same, but it will be more than close enough to give you a good idea of what you're looking for, without getting too unreasonable for a single homebrewer to do by themselves.
Good luck!
However, yeast strains function differently - one could possibly use up all the oxygen before the other gets to really begin reproducing much, for example - which means that you'll have to experiment quite extensively with not just pitching rates but ratios as well. That's a lot for a single homebrewer to do even with two exact strains in mind, but when you consider the possible combinations of even a handful of strains, it's pretty crazy.
Then there's also the fact that you'll always have to pitch them separately in the correct ratio. This means separate starters, and NO repitching yeast, as the ratio in a finished beer will be different than what you started with - the yeast that is able to reproduce more would become increasingly prominent so that you get less and less of the other strain, until after a few repitches you're practically using only a single strain.
It's not necessarily the exact same (though it's not that it's better or worse, just a BIT different at most), but I think it's much easier to just blend finished beers each fermented with a single strain. That way you can experiment in a glass quite easily - even with more than 2 strains! - to find the ratios you like best. Then you can just blend them on a bigger scale. By keeping the fermentations separate, you'll also be able to repitch all the yeast if you want without running into the issue I described in the previous paragraph.
If you insist on blending strains to ferment anyways, I'd still highly recommend experimenting with blending single-strain batches at first regardless. It MIGHT not be the EXACT same, but it will be more than close enough to give you a good idea of what you're looking for, without getting too unreasonable for a single homebrewer to do by themselves.
Good luck!
