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Hey guys,

Just wondering if anyone's every brewed an ale, then pitched a lager yeast after the ale yeast had finished in an attempt to ferment a bit more of the malt.

Since lager yeasts often have better attenuation, I thought this might be a way to produce a beer with the fruitiness from an ale yeast but the lighter body of a lager yeast. Something along the lines of a Samuel Adams Boston Lager, perhaps.

Just a thought. Perhaps not a good one, but a thought nonetheless.

Cheers,

Oliver

Not tried it, but got me thinking.(That often ends badly....)

The main problem that I see is would the Lager yeasts multiply up to sufficent numbers with all those ale yeasts floating around?

Perhaps if you let the bucket sit for a couple of days after the Ale yeast has finished, then cool to a Lager temp (to send the Ale yeasts dormant) before pitching the Lager yeast to hopfully give it ahead start over the ale yeasts.

Another way would be to get one of the more attenuative Ale yeasts from white labs. Or throw in a dry enzyme.

Cheers,

Greg B

What about something like a Kolsch or American steam beer yeast to give you a pseudo-lager ale?

I don't think the few percent in attenuation will give you a real noticeable difference to be worth the effort.

If you're doing an AG mash you can tweak the mash temperature to get a more fermentable wort.

The American Steams actually use a Lager yeast. Got one through White Labs called a San Francisco Lager, It ferments warm 68 F or so. That is the lethargic lager I was refering to earlier. Should be filtering by next week.

Dogger

Oliver,
was talking with Gregb obout a recent brew I did which stopped dead in it's tracks at around 1018. It was a Cooper's IPA with Coopers tin of Light Liquid Malt, the yeast was the supplied one. This occured after two weeks, and I checked three days in a row with no SG movement. Has anyone encountered this before?
Anyway, I pitched a stubby of recovered saflager from a previous brew and placed at about 14 degrees in the fridge. The brew completed and I finally bottled this last weekend, six weeks after the being put down! (had to go away in the middle of this so at least a week overdue).
I had a swig from the test jar and all seems good, very good.

In short, I've done this cause I had too and seems to have no ill effect. I'll post a sampler note in a couple of weeks. After reading about cold conditioning, I placed about a dozen stubbies of this batch in the fridge for a couple of weeks so I'll also compare these to the normal conditioned ones.
Quite often I pitch both Ale and Lager yeasts and brew for about 4 days at 20 - 22 degrees then finish at a lager temp of about 14 - 16 degrees. This seems to work quite well so far, so when your on a good thing!
Bally

Good thought, but does'nt the yeast go dormant because all the sugars/malts have been consumed? So if the brew was pitched correctly and the temp was stable the yeast should have consumed all the fermentables already.

Hillbilly,
I assume your responding to the yeast not completing fermentation? after pitching the saflager it brewed out to 1012, so fermentation had not completed. The packet yeast was pitched at about 24 degrees and start SG was 1040, and brewing temp was around 22 degrees. Strange! but this is what happened.
As lager yeasts do attenuate further than ale yeasts, there has to be some additional unfermented sugars left when using an ale yeast.
Bally

racking is a good way to get fermentation finished as it stirs fermentables and yeast.

Kitkat,
I shook the bucket like an English Nanny a few times while the kit yeast was in, so it should have got going again. Good tip though!

I'm currently attempting a Bass ale clone. The man at the HBS suggested using safale yeast. I also steeped some crystal grain and added quick boil hops. All this was a departure from the standard kit recipes I'd been using.

After 5 days I had two hydrometer readings at 1018 with tapwater reading 1000. I figured it must be finished so racked to another container where it lies as we speak. My question is about the gravity level when fermentation finishes. I don't usually measure it and because I did, perhaps I might have stuffed the beer by racking too early??

If the gravity is too high, should I add another yeast or let it lie? If adding more yeast, what type?

you can't stuff anything by racking (unless you don't clean your secondary ). At "worst", it'll continue fermenting in the secondary, but that's not really a problem at all.

I did this just recently and it worked nicely.I srarted with a safale us56,which stopped fermenting at 1016and then added saflager s23,which took off at 20 degrees for 2 days and the brew finished at 1010.This ale(dark) tasted nice after only 3 weeks,fairly dry.

Oliver, sounds like a good idea. I read an article on "krausening" the other day that may be relevent (can find it now though ). It suggested adding a starter of yeast that is at high krausen to a wort that has pretty much finished fermenting. It was supposed to help attenuation and consume any remaining diacetyl. The author claims that this is not an uncommon practice in the pro brew industry.

Perhaps this technique might help here?

Cheers,

Adam L

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