Great experiment as always. And I really tried not to but I can't help myself. Kolsch yeast has a very distinctive flavor that you shouldn't get out of a lager yeast. If I didn't know any better and wasn't looking for it I may miss it. But if you told me that one was kolsch and one was lager I could pick it out very easily.
With all do respect, I doubt it. I thought the same thing, my friends thought the same thing, so many people have thought the same thing.
I'm willing to send you my address.
I can tell very easily, but it definitely helps if one knows what he or she is looking for. If you do a completely blind taste test it certainly can throw people off.
i can easily tell the difference between the WY and WL strain as well. A friend of mine who owns a brewery did a kolsch recently and I knew right away they used their standard neutral ale strain because it didn't taste like a kolsch. In fact, I think it is possible to use Chico or Wy1007 to trick people into thinking a beer is a lager than it is a kolsch strain.
None of that is meant to take away from your excellent experiments. You have all my respect.
100% respect to you as well! This isn't contentious, just a fun conversation, that's how I view it.
I'm curious how you're sure you "can tell very easily"? Have you done side by sides? Bias is certainly a powerful thing.
So awhile back, we adapted the xBmt survey to allow people to repeat the triangle test following revelation of the variable. Basically, they would complete the triangle test totally blind then we'd tell them what the test was about and allow them to re-evaluate the beers and take the triangle test again. This stemmed from a couple others swearing knowledge of the variable would make a difference.
It didn't. At all. Of close to 100 participants over multiple xBmts, an entire 1 changed their original response... and it was from the correct beer to one of the wrong ones. I get it, we don't like to hear that we're not as good as we think we are, it's human nature to want to believe we are good at what we think we're good at.
I'm speaking only of WLP029. We've compared it to WY2565 and people were reliably able to distinguish the odd beer out:
http://brulosophy.com/2015/08/31/yeast-comparison-white-labs-wlp029-vs-wyeast-wy2565-xbmt-results/But compared to 34/70, I'm telling you, they were close enough to fool some of the best evaluators I know:
http://brulosophy.com/2015/04/13/lager-fermentation-traditional-yeast-vs-hybrid-yeast-exbeeriment-results/I probably won't send you any beer, may not even repeat this one in the near future, but I can't recommend more doing this very simple comparison for yourself!