From several posts ago I whipped up an American Brown Ale in which I chose to blend to strains of dried yeast.  I spoke about the purposes of trying the blend in Yeast Blending post.

Now more than a month later I am prepared to share some results!

My primary goal with blending US-05 with S-04 was to see if the super flocculating S-04 would help to pull out the low flocculating US-05.  US-05 always seems to take more time to clear out, flocculation starting somewhere after day 10 in primary.  S-04 on the other hand tends to finish up and start flocculating within 3-5 days.

In this first pass experiment, I was pleased to witness that the total yeast suspension was falling out of solution very rapidly within 5 days.  By 14 days my final gravity (1.012) was achieved and the beer was basically clear.  I used a glass carboy just for the purpose of monitoring the yeast activity.  The yeast cake was very tight (as you see with S-04), but not as firm as you normally see with S-04 alone.  Perhaps this is a result of the combination with the lower flocculator US-05.

The secondary result is the taste.  I would say that the flavor is stil very English.   The ester profile still seems like the traditional S-04.  I would have thought that the two yeasts would have maybe made a mellower English profile.  The flavor is still good though and I would probably try this blend again when shooting for a well attenuated English styled ale.
Hop flavor did seem a bit diminshed though.  For all the Cascade hops in there I would have expected more bitterness.  But the hop “pop” you get when using US-05 alone isn’t there.  Again, this sort of profiles the English yeast again.  I think the bitterness and flavor gets a little lost with the roasty malts and the ester profile of the S-04.

Head formation and retention seemed to be normal for either yeast.

Overall, then I don’t think that the blend really gave me something in between the US and English profiles.  Perhaps the clean-ness of the US-05 just still lets the S-04 character shine through.  While this is not an extensive test (and I hate making and reading about one time experiments as a definitive answer), I found the results useful.  I will definitely try this experiment again as working with the dried yeasts is easy.  A great test for this “co-flocculation” experiment would be to blend some German Hefe-style yeast with S-04 and see how much of that pulls down.  I would not be looking forward to those flavor combinations though.

If it ever warms up here and I get my garden hose unburied from the snow, I’ll brew up the Cascade Pale Ale to accompany the Brown Ale…with the yeast blend for sure.

BREW ON!

If you have been following Brew-Dudes for the past few weeks, you know that as a part of the Brown Porter brew session, we threw in an experiment at bottling.  We had a bag of KreamyX and we wanted to see if it did what it said it would do: increase head formation and retention. 

At bottling, we split the 5 gallon batch equally into two bottling buckets.  One had a priming solution made with corn sugar, the other was made with KreamyX.   We bottled as usual and we waited.   Both sets of bottles were placed in the same area for priming.  We tried our hardest to keep everything the same except for the priming solution.

Last night, two bottles were opened up and the contents were placed side by side:

Well, I don’t know what your take is from the photos above but it appears to me that KreamyX produced a fuller head that lasted longer.  The beer with the corn sugar as a priming solution had a nice head too, but the KreamyX outperformed it.

I put together a video too.  I need to edit it and then I will post that too. 

I know everyone has been waiting patiently for the results of the KreamyX vs. Corn Sugar experiment.  I just checked a few bottles and they look to be carbing up nicely.  Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.

Well, there hasn’t been any bottle bombs so that’s a positive.

I am planning to put a couple in the fridge tomorrow or Thursday, (one of each priming agent) and this weekend, we’ll pop ‘em open and see what’s what.

If you are tuning in late, here are the details of this homebrewing experiment.

UPDATE:  Here are the results of the experiment!

As seen in my American Brown Ale and Cascade Pale Ale recipes (still to come), I combined two yeast strains into the same wort.  I had a couple reasons for doing this, primarily for my own curiosity. First, I have always been amazed at how well Safale-04 flocculates out. Getting clear beer is never an issue with S-04.  I also love the English flavor profile that it brings to the table for those styles of beers.  US-05 however, is a really clean flavor producer and is perfect for any American style ale.  However, it is a really crappy flocculator.  It takes some time for it to flocculate out completely.  It’s not impossible and a little cold storage will help it along.  So my primary reason to blend the two together was to see if the high flocculation of S-04 would also bind up the US-05 and pull both yeasts out at once.  Only time will tell…  I am expecting to get a slight diminished English character but not a completely clean American yeast character. But my main reason for the experiment was to test the flocculation cooperativity hypothesis.

My second reason for blending was that I only had one packet of either yeast type and they were both pushing their suggested expiration date.  In normal circumstances, I would have pitched two packets of the same dried yeast.  So I decided to use both as a good opportunity to try my flocculation experiment while still provided a high enough yeast cell count for the pitch.

Lastly, if by some weird luck I get a unique tasting combination with the two yeasts, I would maybe be on my way to developing a “house” strain of yeast.  I plan to collect and store some of the blended cake for future use in a mason jars.

Stay posted for further insights into my yeast blending experiment.

Yesterday was bottling day for the Brown Porter and this time around, we threw in a little experiment. Bottling can be boring so we sometimes like to throw a smidge of excitement. Just a smidge.

As described in our priming sugar experiment post, we split the beer into two different bottling buckets with two separate priming sugars. One bucket had corn sugar in it, the other had KreamyX. Each priming sugar was weighed and measured for 2.5 gallons and not the standard 5 gallon quantities.

Bottling went on without a hitch. Our friend Lyle was there to help out and was rewarded taking half the bottles home.

Our final gravity was 1.016, a little high from where I wanted it to be (1.011). Then again, our starting gravity was higher than the predicted gravity: (1.052 vs 1.047).  We tasted the sample and it didn’t repulse us.

Now we wait. All bottles have been labeled as either a KreamyX bottle or not. We will crack a few open 2 weeks from now and see.

UPDATE: Here are the results of the experiment!

Oh, it’s on.  The stage is set for this Sunday.  I have purchased a pound of corn sugar for bottling the brown porter.  We are going to test the results of priming with KreamyX versus priming with corn sugar.

• Split the unfinished beer in half; placing 2.5 gallons of the beer into two separate bottling buckets.
• Prepare the proper amount of KreamyX and corn sugar for 2.5 gallons (dissolving the priming agents into two separate amounts of water, cooling them down to fermentation temperatures).
• Bottle as normal, but using the two bottling buckets.
• Condition for the same amount of time (2 weeks).
• Pour out 2 beers; one that had corn sugar as a priming agent, one that had KreamyX as a priming agent.
• Compare results.

UPDATE!  Here are the results!

There’s all kind of clearing agents out there.  I can happily report that a method worked for me.  I have always read that if you leave your beer in the fridge for a month or so, the chill haze causing proteins would settle out.

I have had beer stored in the fridge, but my haze never went away.  This time, for whatever reason, the time in the chill chest cleared the beer right up.  I did have a good cold break when I brewed.  Maybe that is part of my success.

I will take a picture soon and post it here.  We are meeting up with one of the Brew Dudes’ friends this Friday night.  He’s visiting from Iceland and I am bringing the last of the APAs.   I want to save the bottles until then.