Chris White joins me this week from White Labs to discuss his FrankenStout, FrankenYeast and the use of yeast blends in beer.
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Topics in This Week’s Episode (47:14)
- Today I welcome Dr Chris White. Chris is the President and founder of White Labs Inc, a top provider of brewing yeast worldwide to both the professional and home brewing markets.
- Editors Note: I do apologize for the video quality this week. Chris was having some technical difficulties so the video feed was marginal. However as his schedule has been packed and we rescheduled twice already we decided to proceed. Fortunately the audio and content Chris provided is excellent.
- We start with a discussion on what has been happening at White Labs including unfortunately the temporary closure of his location in Asheville, NC due to the hurricane which did tremendous damage. Fortunately his facility was not seriously damaged, though they did suffer loss of power and water for several weeks. Many of his employees faced serious losses, however, and our hearts go out to those recovering in Asheville.
- We start with a discussion of stouts and porters and some of the yeast characteristics that make the best stouts, porters and other dark English style beers.
- Chris goes into some detail on the yeasts and yeast flavors that work well with stouts and also explains why high attenuation is surprisingly important.
- We discuss the White Labs re-release of their legendary “FrankenYeast” blend which is a blend of some 96 yeast strains including both lagers and ales. Chris tells us about this unique strain and some of the flavors it creates in a finished beer.
- We also talk about the related re-release of FrankenStout for Halloween which is a dark English style stout made using the FrankenYeast blend. Chris also released a pretty funny video on his website related to the release of the yeast and stout which you can find here: The Return of FrankenStout
- Chris explains how the FrankenYeast actually has science behind it and we talk about his earlier work to genotype some 157 yeast strains in an effort to understand the genetic heritage of all of our brewing yeasts.
- We transition to a talk about yeast blends and how blending two distinct yeasts manifests itself in the beer. Chris says that in general phenolic yeasts tend to always create phenolics in the finished beer, and also that the lower attenuation yeast will generally finish out the fermentation to a similar attenuation. However with respect to other flavors the blending of yeast also tends to result in a blend of similar flavors in the finished beer.
- We talk about Chris’ web site where people can learn more about individual yeast strains as well as FrankenYeast and FrankenStout
- Chris shares his closing thoughts.
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