Pitching 2 yeasts (Wine and Beer)

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone has pitched a beer and wine yeast together?

If they have am I best off making a yeast starter for both?
Can I make a starter containing both yeasts or do they have to be separate?
should one be pitched before the other?
Should I wait and preform a kind of third stage of fermentation?

Any help would be greatly appreciated however I appreciate this is a bit of an odd thing to want to do.

Yes and no. Yes I have done it and No don’t do it.
For the most part the wine strains are killers in comparison to the ale/ lager strains. The killers dominate making it a waste of effort and money. To do it you need to give the weaker strain the advantage and let the killers play clean up.
So you will see people pitching champagne yeast to finish at bottling time or people pitching Brett to finish and funkivize.

Just tonight I had a beer a very good distiller made using his go to distillers yeast and it did not work as a beer even though it made a premium rye whiskey

Ah brilliant! I shall avoid pitching the wine yeast then! on the plus side it looks I am now going to try my hand at making some elderflower wine :slight_smile: Thank you very much @squeegeethree

Wine yeast works well for mixed fermentation, since it only ferments simple sugars and leaves plenty for other microbes to metabolize. But skip it if you’re making a sacch-only beer. Only time it makes sense in a clean beer is at bottling for high gravity.

Thank you @porkchop I think I am going to skip it this time, I have been reading up on the way it works with sugars, I think there’s potential but as this only be my third brew I’ll get a bit more hands on experience before I start making my own recipes.

Although when I do add wine yeast I am thinking mango ale for summer. so ferment a light crisp EPA first then add some pulped mango with the wine yeast and let ferment for a little bit longer before bottling for its final fermentation.

Hopefully ill get a strong crisp ale where the mango softens the taste on the palet

What are you hoping to achieve with adding wine yeast? There are good reasons to use it, but I’m a bit confused as to what you are hoping to get from it. Let us know what your objective is, and there may be better ways to achieve it…

It was mostly curiosity, I have a sachet of elderflower wine yeast just sitting here and I thought it would add a great flavour to my next IPA

From what you’ve said the only real reason to use wine yeast is to make a high gravity beer or to convert simple sugars hence the mango ale idea :slight_smile:

Except brewers yeast also ferments simple sugars, so there wouldn’t be much benefit for wine yeast. Which really is the same thing as brewers yeast, but is adapted for fruit juice which doesn’t contain more complex sugars like maltose.

Not trying to discourage you. In my mind, there are three reasons to use wine yeast in beer. First, it generally has a higher alcohol tolerance than brewers yeast, so is good for bottle conditioning if you’re pushing the limits of brewers yeast. Second, it leaves the complex sugars in the wort, which provides a food source if you’re going to add something like brettanomyces in secondary. Third, some strains have a unique ester profile. You could use wine yeast to develop these esters, and finish with brewers yeast or some other microbe, as in number 2 above.

Ahh with you, so ultimately then there is not going to be any benefit at all, even if I was to add it in at a later stage the brewers yeast would have already consumed the sugars.

Its all a learning curve at the moment, at least this way I wont waste be wasting my ingredients.

Ill keep the wine yeast to one side for future use :slight_smile:

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[quote=“Twinnedfoil, post:9, topic:26198”]
there is not going to be any benefit at all
[/quote]I pitch multiple strains of yeast all the time, just rarely wine strains. You need to learn what each strain does best first before combining. Because wine yeast is cheap hard at high ABV, specifically champagne yeast, I will most likely use them at bottling time on strong beers where my ale yeast is worn out.

Ahh so you would pitch directly into each bottle and im assuming chill and pour carefully to reduce sediment.

I do like the idea of pitching different yeasts to give the beer different qualities, I am going to get myself a note pad and keep recipies and results. That seems like the best way to keep it all straight.

Its all food for thought though, before I start pitching yeast into bottles I think ill have to invest in some proper bottles, I dont want to be creating little bombs.

Seems to me brewing is super easy to learn but super hard to master! Thank you all for the help and guidance

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Yes, keeping notes is what its all about… You can replicate a recipe from notes… You can even complete your notes by putting down what your tasting… Fun stuff to do, split your batches and try different yeast… You’ll find out just how much yeast contributes to the out come… Sneezles61

Splitting batches is a great call, I am having a brew day this Wednesday so ill get a couple of different yeasts and see what happens :slight_smile:

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