TOPIC:

Was thinking of throwing in a bottle (500ml) of Rogue Pacman yeast/beer/slop (sitting in fridge for about 6months) and sachet of Safale american ale yeast into the fermenter. I saved the 500 ml bottle out of my last brew batch, but am to lazy to try to make a starter for the first time. Would that yeast work like this, or is it too old, has anyone mixed yeasts in a beer before?

Aaron

After 6 months I'd defintely be inclined to make a starter with the Pacman slop to see if it's viable i.e. smells right, tastes right, attentuates, flocculates.

Yeah. 6 months is a long time. No telling how many, if any cells are still alive.

Smell it first and if it smells ok, make a starter. Don't risk a batch of wort on this without growing it up and checking that it's ok.

I recently used a 6 months out of date vial of yeast with two indate packets of dried yeast. The results were not good, and very similar to when I did something similar in the past, i.e. drain cleaner, so be careful!

Everyone else already answered the question about whether to make a starter so I'll cover the "mixing yeasts" issue.


You can definitely mix yeasts and based upon some limited experiments I've seen and even fewer that I've done myself you get basically the results that you'd expect. (Half of the flavor attributes of strain 1 and half of the flavor attributes of strain 2.)


Adam

I'll second what Adam said, there's nothing wrong with mixing yeasts. I've mixed Safale S04 and US05 several times as it gives a nice balance between both flavour profiles.