Combining Yeasts For A Belgian

[milestron]

Hey all putting down a fairly high og brew this weekend, recipe loosely based on a rochefort 10 recipe i found somewhere. The dates idea was floating around ahb a little while ago. Anyway I'm going with 1214 for yeast (fresh smackpack), however i also have a 1 ltr starter of 1388 from a rather old smackpack i had lying around.

Was thinking that, so i have sufficient yeast to pitch, maybe I just make an experiment out of it and pitch both? Seems that with belgians in particular this isn't unheard of (reading Brew like a Monk and a couple blogs around the place). Wasn't able to find any specific instances where these particular yeasts had been used together.

It'd be a bit of guesswork as to which yeast would dominate. I would think 1214 would still be the main player.

As an alternative, I might go the route of pitching the 1214 only, but adding the candi sugar and caramelised dates a few days in.

Here's the recipe for reference:

New Recipe
Belgian Dark Strong Ale

Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 19.0
Total Grain (kg): 6.300
Total Hops (g): 55.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.075 (P): 18.2
Final Gravity (FG): 1.016 (P): 4.1
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 7.76 %
Colour (SRM): 25.3 (EBC): 49.8
Bitterness (IBU): 26.9 (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 70
Boil Time (Minutes): 90

Grain Bill
----------------
3.500 kg Pilsner (55.56%)
1.500 kg Maris Otter Malt (23.81%)
0.500 kg Caramalised dates (7.94%)
0.250 kg Candi Sugar, Dark (3.97%)
0.250 kg Wheat Malt (3.97%)
0.100 kg Aromatic Malt (1.59%)
0.100 kg Carared (1.59%)
0.100 kg Special-B (1.59%)

Hop Bill
----------------
25.0 g Fuggles Pellet (5.7% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil) (1.3 g/L)
15.0 g Hallertau Tradition Pellet (5.7% Alpha) @ 30 Minutes (Boil) (0.8 g/L)
15.0 g Hallertau Tradition Pellet (5.7% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes (Boil) (0.8 g/L)

Misc Bill
----------------
5.0 g Corriander Seed @ 10 Minutes (Boil)

Single step Infusion at 66C for 60 Minutes.
Fermented at 20C with Wyeast 1214 - Belgian Abbey


Recipe Generated with BrewMate

 

[Jace89]

I've only read a limited amount of info on blending yeasts, but I'll try and help.

If your going to simply pitch both yeasts at the same time I'd say the yeast strain with the bigger pitch will simply dominate over the other. Making it pointless IMO, but then again you could always experiment.

The other way to blend yeasts is to pitch a second strain a few days after the original yeast pitch. So let's say im brewing a triple that's around 12%+ but for some crazy reason I want to use Safale 04. I know that Saf04 isn't going to get the job done at all, so a few days later i would add (insert Belgian yeast strain here). This would allow you to add whatever extra sugar you want to had and achieve highest attentiation possible.

I hope this make some sense, I'm current using my phone to type.