Double fermentation of beer

Was watching one of Tiny's (OffTapBrewing) vids on the tube regarding a beer from India he stumbled on that had been double fermented. Thought I'd read a similar thing from a commercial brewer awhile back regarding the process, racked my head/the net and found it. Not a heck of a lot of information, but gives a little insight into the process used by Little Creatures here in Australia. Anyway, cheers guys.

From 2009 -

"We do ferment with an ale yeast and then filter bright and re-innoculate with a pilsner yeast (the same strain that we use in our Pilsner in fact).

There are a number of microbiological reasons for doing so - lager yeast is slightly more vigourous, will ferment a bit dryer, etc. We do only add JUST enough to do the job and post bottle conditioning we actually chill every batch to ensure tight compaction of the yeast. This is just our philosophy and there are plenty of other ways to do it.

And yes, our yeast is stored in Copenhagen and we propagate fresh conditioning yeast every week. (ale yeast about once every 4 weeks).

Anyway, there you go.... (and yes, I guess you could culture up the pils yeast from the bottle, but probably purchase some and you are guaranteed that the yeast is healthy).

Cheers,

Alex (aka LC Chief Brewer)"


Be interested to hear if anyone on Cellar Dwellars has done something similar, and how did it go?

Cheers.

I havent tried it, but have heard a few breweries do it for the bottle conditioning, and others do it a bit different when they are brewing beers with too high alcohol for most beer yeasts, in one go anyway... will be interesting if anyone has tried it

I think with that Indian beer they were taking the piss,if you bottle you could say everybody double ferments technically since you are restarting fermentation in the bottle to carb your beer. A true double ferment IMHO would be fermenting a beer twice before it even reaches a keg or bottle. You might do this if you were producing a 20% high gravity beer.

I was actually talking with Tony Yates in Norway last night about this very thing and he had a link to where it had actually been done but the link was broken. Anyway he said that Dogfishhead brewery had done this i think on their 120 IPA ?

Tony Yates(youtube) check him out gave me this link last night. Not the one he was looking for that was broken but he said a very similar process in this one.



www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/vi...llelujah-how-are-ya-

Yep Brewdog have been doing it for years too, for their high alcohol beers, its the only way I assume.

but saying that, when you kill off one yeast and use another in the bottle like some breweries do hmmm tough call

hmmmmm

Nah gash m8 i think brewdog uses fractal distillation? "freeze distilling" if you like Watch a guy called secue 01 on youtube




There ya go.

They do use freeze distillation but they also add yeast to some of the worts to get fermentation happening again, I can't remember which beer it was but I met one of the original Brewdog guys when he was here in Australia, a few years ago now, at an Ales Stars Meet the Brewer night and I remember him talking about it. You can see my ugly mug at the event here...

Brewdog Alestars

Dullahan wrote:

I think with that Indian beer they were taking the piss,if you bottle you could say everybody double ferments technically since you are restarting fermentation in the bottle to carb your beer. A true double ferment IMHO would be fermenting a beer twice before it even reaches a keg or bottle. You might do this if you were producing a 20% high gravity beer.

I was actually talking with Tony Yates in Norway last night about this very thing and he had a link to where it had actually been done but the link was broken. Anyway he said that Dogfishhead brewery had done this i think on their 120 IPA ?

Absolutely mate Tiny was having a laugh with the Indian beer. Anyhoos, I think (in my imagination) that it's one thing to double ferment, and another to double with two separate yeast styles. And so, was wondering if anyone had experimented and documented their findings. I would like to try a Little Creatures ale that was bottled conditioned (as an ale) compared to the same thing that was bottled with a different yeast altogether (pils). So, if anyone out there can shed light on the potential bonus or .. myth, do tell. For mine (in my imagination again) I reckon the difference would be so slight only the highest of trained palates could tell apart (gimmick), then again, the difference could be massive.
Would be interested to find out if anyone has tried both, and what were their findings?