Ideas needed: single ferment split to create 2 different beers

Milkshake whatever.
It seems all the rage to drop whatever else you can get away with in them.

 

I think a good Gose is very flexible.

 

I could swear one of us wrote an article for BYO a couple years back about this very thing... hmm... who was that... oh, shit, that was me!

Few ideas... different dry hops on an IPA, fruit addition to an IPA, Habanero to an IPA, fruit addition and Ghost Pepper to an IPA - Passion Fruit works great on that one. You can do a Munich Dunkel and add sour dregs to half post fermentation for a Oud Bruin. Different fruit additions or dry hopping a Gose. Tequila oak aged Saison or Gin oak aged Saison. Coffee Dark Mild, coffee IPA, coffee almost anything non-Belgian. Brett added post ferment to pretty much most Belgians. You can also get a little more involved with boiled and carbonated water to cut a beer... like I did with a Dopplebock and Dunkel. Took 3 gallons of DP and added it to a keg of pre-boiled water I had scrubbed with CO2 for a very nice Munich Dunkel.

 

100% Continental Pils OG ~1.045. Noble hops to about 30-35IBU. Heavy flavor and aroma additions. Ferment half with a lager yeast and the other half with a saison yeast.

 

Or go for a hipster twofer - split a batch of juicy, low-bitterness IPA, add lacto to one half for milkshake and amyloglucosidase to the other for brut.

 

try a porter with hedgehog mushrooms in secondary.

 

I split a Berliner into two batches, since the boils were so short. One got white sage at flameout, and fermented on two pureed pineapples. The other got a ton of blueberries.

Another split batch that I do a lot, is Saison. One gets a Saison/Brett blend, and the other is fermented with a clean saison yeast. Experimenting with dry hops/fruit additions always ends up happening too. Always fun to compare. But, you’re wanting to use the same yeast on both batches, right?

 

The first thing I thought of upon reading the header was the pilsner/saison that MrOH recommends. Two very different and tasty beers from one wort.

 

Neipa and saison. Run half your beer off the kettle for the saison, then add whirlpool hops to the kettle.

 

grapes/grape juice are a fun one to play with....like a white vs. red split for something like an amber or brown.

Actually Magic Hat has been doing a lot of experimenting with wine-beer hybrids lately that I've been enjoying a lot. Cool to see Magic Hat getting their groove back.

 

Almost every beer I make is a split batch. I will pitch two different yeast strains. Even if it is two different English strains there will be different tastes. Good luck.

 

I've put some thought into split batches. Where in the process you are willing to branch from one beer into two?

At packaging? - You don't necessarily need extra equipment. You can package half and then dose the other half. You could go with flavor additions or keg hops. If kegging, splitting a batch and doing something different with keg hops is pretty straight forward. Flavor additions might be some spice tinctures, for instance. I have plans to do a Berliner Weiss soon and am going to add grapefruit crystals to half the batch, in the bottling bucket, with the hope of making something sour and juicelike. The other half is going to be dosed with Brett at bottling. I also will be doing a Belgian pale ale batch very soon in which I will dose with Brett at bottling for half the batch, after kegging the first half. (Typically, I keg my sacch beers but bottle anything with Brett and lacto). If bottling, people used to talk about using different sugars at bottling. I mostly dismissed it, thinking that bottling sugars are sufficiently insignificant in mass to impart real differences, but what do I know?

At primary? -- Then you need two fermenters. Easy split batches at this stage use different yeasts, or with the NEIPA thing, different fermentation hops. Fruit would work at this stage, too. Sugar additions are easy here (ever wonder what the difference between D2 and D1 candi sugar syrups tastes like?)

At boiling? You'll want different kettles or else you'll want to store half your wort while boiling the other half (my preferred approach). Hopping changes are easy here. Make a helles and a pilsner for example. A west coast and an English IPA (or a NEIPA)

Another way to differentiate during the boil is to use a side mash or a side steep. You can steep roasted and crystal malts separately and add to half the boil to get a very difference beer. One time I mashed a whole bunch of pils, and did a side steep with a little special B and carafa. I boiled half the pils mash, hopping all the way with C hops to make an IPA. The other half got some Belgian yeast and was made into something dubbel-like.