Before Emil Christian Hansen isolated a single yeast culture, in early brewing history, beers were most likely a combination of multiple strains since brewers did not have the ability to isolate a pure yeast strain. This is evident in things like Kveik strains, from the traditional farmhouse methods. These mixed cultures contained a variety of strains and sometimes contained bacteria. Commercially available Kveik strains have been isolated into single strains for purity from contamination and to get more controlled results.
Blends are great for adding unique and more complex flavors and helping solve fermentation problems, such as combining alcohol-tolerant strains with strains of a specific flavor profile, increasing attenuation to finish a beer, or even helping with conditioning aspects, such as flocculation.
I first fell in love with blends when people were brewing more Belgian-style beers because I enjoyed the complexity of flavors produced, particularly saisons. So we created saison blends, resulting in beers with more dryness, more character, and greater re-pitching benefits. It was a win-win. Customers were happy, and so were their consumers, which helped us in our other innovations.
In these earlier years, we created a blend with a particular customer using a combination of WLP001 California Ale Yeast and WLP002 English Ale Yeast called Best of Both Worlds Yeast. At the time, this blend brought the best of both worlds to fermentation - the attenuation of WLP001 and the flocculation of WLP002 & flavor profile of both strains. But time moves on, and so have our offerings to meet evolving needs.
We have been doing this work for years, so it may seem commonplace now, but closer to our start, most brewers were using one strain, some for all their beers. There is some validity to this in terms of purity. We were locked into a single yeast since Danish scientist, Emil Christian Hansen isolated a single yeast culture on November 12, 1883, as I have written previously. One beer, one pure strain. Great for purity, but a customer’s beers could be one-note as a result. We decided we needed to challenge brewers to try more blends and craft beers that are really unique.
PurePitch® Next Generation provides a modular way to use yeast with five-barrel pitch increments. If you are making a ten-barrel batch, you can get two different pouches, making it easy to create your own blend that you can re-pitch. This gives you, the brewer, more freedom and another paintbrush to create complex and unique flavors.
WLP077 Tropicale Yeast Blend is an example of a blend that has made a big impact in brewing. For this blend, we focused on a variety of non-GMO yeast strains that have been carefully selected to aid biotransformation in the release of bound thiol compounds by targeting high enzymatic B-lyase activity.
Breweries have conducted their own experiments and gathered feedback on this strain as well. In Ohio, a brewery customer conducted a blind customer survey to see what attributes people looked for in their consumed beers. Number one was hazy, number two was citrus, and number three was tropical. WLP077 Tropicale Yeast Blend helped check mark all those boxes.
Other fermentations use mixed cultures and blends. Wine or cider can be naturally fermented using the wild yeast and other microbes on the skin of the fruit. Kombucha is fermented and acidified with a SCOBY, a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. Working in harmony and adding more or less of a culture can shift certain attributes like alcohol production to lactic or acetic acid formation. Altering parameters for blends can put certain strains at an advantage or disadvantage.
Another fun experiment we had with blending yeast was blending all our core strains at the time. Not only was this inspired by our research with San Diego-based biotechnology companies Illumina and Synthetic Genomics to sequence and assemble the full genome of 96 of the company’s yeast strains to help foster the science and creativity that propels our industry. It’s a great unique way to use blends for fun as well as celebrate science! Be on the lookout for our exclusive releases of this strain!
For blends, one can either pitch both at the same time or stagger the fermentation. In one of our collaboration experiments, we brewed a Session IPA with a staggered fermentation. Utilizing a wild yeast, WLP603 Torulaspora Delbrueckii, common in winemaking and known for its very fruity ester production, we added some apple juice to the recipe and let the wild yeast start the fermentation off until 20% attenuation. The beer was then finished with WLP028 Edinburgh/Scottish Ale Yeast was pitched to complete the fermentation. Creating aromas of fruit to pair with the hop bill while still maintaining a crisp beer, finishing at 86.8% apparent attenuation.
Today, we have 50 strains labeled as blends, plus private blends. This lineup includes strains from The Yeast Bay, which specializes in blends, as well as many other strains in the yeast bank. We have a long history of listening to our customers and offering custom blends based on their desires, something we also do in our own brewery, White Labs Brewing Co.
These lessons will help us guide you to the best blend possible for your beer, and we’re always looking to expand our collection. Look for our naming convention of yeast blend in our assortment of yeast & bacteria!
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