Mixing Beer Yeast Strains

It’s experiment time! How about we do some mixing of beer yeast strains? Let see how a beer turns out if we mix it up in the yeast department, huh?

Now we have done some yeast blending before and the results were good if not exactly what we were hoping for.

For the Sorachi Ace wheat beer that I am going to brew this weekend, I bought two vials of different yeast strains. I have a WLP001 vial from White Labs and a vial of their Kolsch or German ale strain as well.

I bought both strains because I was debating which one to use. Yesterday morning, I got up early and I was going to make a starter with one of the vial. I started to boil the water when it hit me that I should just use both of the vials.

We’ll see if I get the crispness of the Kolsch yeast after the fermentation is done. I am hoping that the hop flavor and aroma of the Sorachi Ace are accentuated since both strains are supposed have that effect on the finished beer.

The biggest issue with mixing yeast strains is making a beer that may not fit the BJCP guidelines of the style you are brewing. For an American Wheat, it seems to me that the style just needs some clean yeast strain characteristics in the finished flavor. No clove or phenolic flavors that are produced from a German wheat beer strain. Both the California and the Kolsch yeast strain are clean. They don’t produce any funky flavor so maybe this mix won’t be profound.

I do think that there may be the chance that I will get the crispness from the Kolsch yeast with the softness of the California strain. Look for updates on this experiment in a future post.

Brew on!