Mixing beer and wine yeast

I'm not familiar with redstar premier rouge, but many (most?) wine strains are "killers," meaning they release a toxin that kills susceptible strains. Assuming that redstar premier rouge is a killer (I don't actually know if it is), you might expect little contribution from the US-05 and under-attenuation due to the fact that wine strains can't ferment maltotriose and are pretty bad at fermenting maltose. You might want to keep a close eye on the attenuation before you package. Or perhaps someone knows for sure about redstar premier rouge's killer/neutral/susceptible properties.

 

I've never mixed beer and wine yeast, but here are a few posts from Mad Fermentationist that might give you some food for thought. First, the recipe post, then a review of the finished product, then a later review. This is probably not the sort of beer you have in mind, but hopefully it will be helpful.

I have no idea if Redstar Premier Rouge is a "killer" strain that might have taken over the fermentation. (I see @VikeMan made the same point in his response, so I'll stop there.)

 

I don't know if it is either, but I don't believe that Chico is killer factor sensitive, so it is probably a moot point. FWIW, here's a list of some killer factor positive, neutral, and sensitive strains from the BBB.

http://www.babblebelt.com/newboard/thread.html?tid=1108752780&th=1275037001

I'd doubt this, as if Chico was, indeed, killer factor sensitive, it's wouldn't have made it to maximum cell density.

Killer factor ONLY affects yeast of the same species, so a Sacch. yeast that was killer factor positive would not affect a Brett. sp., even if it was killer factor sensitive.

 

I've used wine strains in both clean and mixed fermentation beer with, in my opinion, very good success.

Braggots are great beers to use them. Actually, I'm about to bottle one that used Muntons Dry Ale yeast and VL3 (a high thiol producing "boutique" yeast). Anxious to give it a taste. Not to brag, but I've won medals at the Mazer Cup for my braggots with both brewers yeast and wine yeast. I think that the wine yeast, depending upon the strain that you choose, lends a more mead-like characteristic that you normally wouldn't achieve with brewers yeast alone and the brewers yeast will help to properly attenuate your wort, because, as @VikeMan said, wine yeast tend to not be able to ferment as diverse carbon sources as brewers yeast can.

 

The ale yeast will have consumed the simple sugars that are available to the wine yeast. I don't believe this will do anything for you

 

Agreed. You'd have to do it the other way around to get a decent result.

 

That might accomplish what you want, although I think a less risky wY to go is to conduct two different fermentations and blend to taste

 

Not every wine yeast expresses killer factor and not every brewers yeast is killer factor sensitive.

 

Please do. I'd be anxious to hear your results.

 

I have always heard that either all or virtually all ale strains are susceptible. In fact, your link says that they all are. Is there some reason you don't believe that Chico in particular is?

 

I would have to disagree with that, as I've used ale yeast with wine yeast on quite a few occasions without issue and have gotten characteristics of both strains. That said, I'm no Shea Comfort, so you might want to take that with an appropriate grain of salt.

 

At the risk of practicing biochemistry without a license, I seem to recall at least two types of killer yeast toxins. One type kills the recipient pretty much outright (by changing the cell membrane somehow?). But the other just prevents DNA synthesis. So I'd speculate that the latter type might allow the affected cells to do fermentation (but not divide) for a while, until they die.

Actually I think we do have one or two biochemist/molecular biologist types on the forum. But I can never remember who they are.

 

There are actually four toxins. A great overview of them can be found, where else, on the Milk The Funk wiki (second heading under the Species section).

http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Saccharomyces

It would be awesome if they would chime in.

FWIW, my "problem" with the notes on Shae's podcast, is that the statement "All ale yeast are 'susceptible.' Most wine yeasts are killer." is not accurate.

"Evidence" of that can be found here: http://www.math.fsu.edu/~gmizell/mead/Lallemand Yeast Quick Reference.pdf

It would be VERY useful, however, if yeast manufacturers would list killer status as a normal part of the profile of the yeast. As it stands now, it is extremely difficult to find out strain by strain specifics as far as this trait goes.

 

It would be awesome if you found that.