Using lager yeast at ale temps

[brewinhard]

Anyone use lager yeast at ale temps before? I have brewed california commons with the California lager strain at 60 degrees. Was going to use the Oktoberfest lager blend for a Biere de garde, and was wondering if anyone had any experience with different fermentation temps for lagers strains and thier results at warmer temps. I am looking for a slight fruitiness with no diacetyl.

[Westco]

If you choose to ferment at a high ale temp with a normal lager yeast you will get a shit load of off flavors, including a lot of diacetyl. Thats why you will hear jamil and others starting their ferment at the low 40's then slowly raise it up and thats to prevent this from happening.

All you are looking for is more esters in your finished product? If I am not mistaken that California "Lager" strain is a hybrid yeast that can ferment at hybrid temps like a Kölsch yeast. If you plan on blending the Ofest and that hybrid yeast I would at least start the ferment temp really low. i still think you will get diacetyl in your beer. If you go too low it will kill off the Hybrid yeast, but if you go to warm you will get a lot of diacetyl from the Ofest beer. I brewed a Ofest beer with a Ofest yeast strain. I pitched at 45 and fermented at 50 and I still had diacetyl that took a good 3 weeks to clean up.

[Pharmbrewer]

If you going to blend I seem to recall someone stating once that your better off fermenting with the yeasts seperately and then blending the beers to taste. This way one yeast will not dominate the other unless you want it to and you can repeat your results. I'm not sure if this would get what your after but you could try fermenting half with your ofest yeast at lager temps half with your cal common yeast at ale temps then blind taste them in small glasses at different ratios i.e. 80/20, 70/30, 50/50 and reversed, then blend the batch to which ever one tastes the best. You may waste a bit of beer the first time but when you brew it again you'll know exactly how much to split. Just be sure to pitch appropriately (sorry if I'm preaching to the chior)

I have'nt done a lot of this yet but I have big plans I'm facinated with the idea of blending different lagers and ales to see what I can come up with. There don't seem to be a lot of commercial breweries out there doing this it seems like an area ripe for experimentation. Then again maybe they are not doing it for a reason. Either way I'm going to find out. If you try this please post your results.

Prost!

[Quin]

I've brewed lot's of helles grain bills and used the German lager yeast at low ale temps (62°). It had a slight fruitiness and a bit of sulphur. Very drinkable. Also a much less of a pain in the ass to ferment when it's 95° in the summer. There was no detectable diacetyl.

[brewinhard]

I did not plan on blending any yeasts. I simply was going to use the yeast cake from the WY oktoberfest lager blend to brew a big biere de garde (8.5% or so). I do not see why there should be excess diacetyl in the beer if given the proper time to condition before packaging. I was thinking I might ferment around 58 or so with the lager yeast. This should keep the beer fairly clean minus some sulfur/diacetyl production which conditioning should take care of.