This is what we do as well and it works fine. We do data processing and have a mix of processing which needs to completed in near real time and other processing

This is what we do as well and it works fine. We do data processing and have a mix of processing which needs to completed in near real time and other processing which we have a bit more leeway on the time. The real time processing runs on stable releases which are tags created off of a stable branch (as you have suggested) and all the other processing runs off the tip of master.