Chimay Yeast History?

This is possibly a topic for the homebrewing forum, but as it does not specifically concern homebrewing, I thought I'd post the question here. I have been reading a lot about Belgian styles recently. I've felt like my biggest gap in beer style knowledge has been Belgian beers, mostly because I'm just not a big fan of phenolic flavors. As I've read about the history of styles, I came across a few mentions of Wyeast's bank of yeast cultured from Chimay being different from Chimay's current yeast strain. It seems most sources believe that this is due to the evolution of the yeast rather than Chimay intentionally making a difference, but at least one source said that Chimay. Here is the quote from a BYO (https://byo.com/body/item/636-fermenting-belgian-style-beers) article:

"Wyeast acquired its 1214 more than 20 years ago from Chimay, and has monitored the yeast to make sure it hasn’t changed since. Chimay, on the other hand, “cleaned up” its yeast in the 1990s, so it’s not the same as it once was."

Does anyone know which version of events is accurate? It's hard to imagine a 130 year old (at the time) brewery intentionally altering its house yeast strain, but if that is the case, it makes me wonder what their reasoning would have been and what the differences are. I would have assumed that if it was something intentional that it would be a case where they isolated colonies of yeast and re-selected a colony that they determined to be the most desirable, but that also sounds more involved than I would expect a trappist brewery to behave. Again though, my ignorance of Belgian styles and breweries could be a factor in my thought process.

 

I wouldn't consider BSI in the same league as Wyeast. At least 3 Alabama breweries got contaminated yeast (Diastaticus contamination) from them all in the same week with at least 3 different yeast strains... These were the only ones discovered too, I'm sure there were more. BSI denied it even though each brewery had lab results from different independent labs showing the same contaminants. Examining yeast from them under a microscope also revealed huge variances in yeast cell size.

 

I'm a big fan of Imperial Organic because of their speed, price, and quantity of yeast cells. They have a strain that is reportedly from Augustiner. Wyeast has the same strain in their private collection. I find a lot of similar flavors to what I drank in Munich, but I tend to get more esters. I attribute this to my processes more than the strain being "significantly" different.

 

Do you remember approximately when this was discussed? I got the impression (from the article) that this happened at a time before Internet forums were common. Switching to closed fermenters could definitely make a "cleaner" beer and the yeast would evolve pretty rapidly in different conditions. I would wonder why Wyeast would "clean' up the yeast, or how they would do so unless the assumption is that their propagation is being done in closed vessels and that is what has caused a change, but if their bank is from older yeast and they have monitored the source closely, it seems that it wouldn't be able to change in the short amount of time that propagation would occur.

 

All 3 did. We were all having issues (secondary fermentation in bottles resulting in explosions on shelves and poor flocculation. Re-pitching the yeast resulted in phenols.) for a few week span and we all discussed it. We ordered pitches and sent them to independent labs without opening them. I had a suspicion that this was the case after doing yeast cell counts and noticing a huge irregularity in yeast cell sizes in their California Common yeast. When I learned what diastaticus was and what it could do, I realized immediately what the problem was and actually thought it was my own fault getting cross contaminations from French Saison yeast. The problems persisted even after changing all gaskets, hoses, and re-evaluating cleaning procedures. When I learned that other breweries were having the same issues we discussed it and the only thing we had in common was BSI, so we ordered the pitches and sent them to labs. I think the other breweries were using Irish Ale yeast and Chico Ale yeast so it wasn't limited to one yeast strain.

 

I actually feel a little bad mentioning it. It was 3 years ago, so maybe they've sorted it out by now. Then again, it took years for my brewery to fix its reputation and sales lag for a long time as a result. We had to discontinue a couple brands of beer.