BRY-97

Lol well okay then, enjoy.

 

http://allaboutbeer.com/ballantine-ipa/

 

I like Jeff Alworth’s writting, and have met him.

The Chico stain is BRY-96 in the Siebel catalog. Ballantine’s beer strain. US-05 and WLP-001. The yeast Genome study says not 1056, it is different.

The Anchor strain is BRY-97 in the Siegel Catalog. Ballantine’s Ale strain. WLP-051 and Wyeast-1272, and dry BRY-97.

Ballantine’s had an ale brewery, and a beer brewery.

@jesskidden may care to comment.

 

That was news for me.

 

News to me, too, if true, that's cool and explains a lot.

 

Read the paragraph under the picture of Kevin Verstrepen.
http://allaboutbeer.com/article/the-family-tree-of-yeast/

 

Yes, but it tastes the same/neutral...unless you are splitting hairs/genomes

 

Tastes awfull!

 

There are subtle differences if you do a split fermentation. I might like 1056 slightly more.

 

Typically all I can contribute to these Ballantine yeast discussions which are based primarily on info from the homebrewing community and second-hand industry sources, most of it originating after the Newark brewery closing in '72 - only adds to the confusion.

Anyway, don't recall reading about the connection between Anchor's top fermenting yeast and Ballantine before (much more common is the related debate about the origins Sierra Nevada's Chico yeast).

Doing some simply Googling --- and, man, the amount of misinformation when it comes to Anchor's beers is incredible and much of it is incorrectly "confirmed" on their own website and/or by their own employees, recently primarily Mark Carpenter --- and most sources just call it Anchor's ale yeast. Well, in 1992 M. Jackson calls it only a "British-style ale yeast". So, yeah, where'd it come from, since pre-1975 they didn't have or use top fermenting yeast? (Even their porter was bottom-fermented initially).

Maytag's been quoted as saying in the early days he simply "borrowed" yeast for Anchor Steam Beer from the macro breweries in San Francisco and vicinity at the time (inc. Hamm, Falstaff [both SF and SJ], Lucky/General, Burgemeister [owned by Schlitz and then Meister Brau]), the way a neighbor borrows a cup of sugar.

(Which raises another question - which of those yeasts, if any, evolved into Anchor's steam beer yeast of today?)

So, in that rough time period of Maytag ownership - mid-60s-mid-'70s - Falstaff was supposedly brewing Ballantine XXX Ale in SF, and it was later moved to General's SF brewery. I say "supposedly" only because the labels said that but I've never seen any other reliable source, beside some newspaper articles at the time Falstaff bought the Ballantine brands.

Nor have I ever read specifically that Falstaff even continued to use Ballantine's original yeast(s) for their Ballantine brews. They certainly played around with the recipe otherwise. Narragansett (Falstaff subsidiary., where most of the Ballantine ales production was brewed in the 1970s) had its own ale yeast - so maybe they wouldn't have introduced another into the facility?

That was in the pre-Pro era - in 1915, the old ale brewery on the Passaic River was closed, and all brewing - ale, porter and stout, and lager - was moved to their lager brewery in the Ironbound section of Newark (originally owned by the Schalk family of German brewers, which claimed to be one of the earliest lager brewers in the US).

Note- So, this is my second attempt at replying - the original about the source of Ballantine's ale yeast got way too long, so I deleted it. This one turned out just as long so --- whatever --- easier to hit "SEND" than doing another cut/paste into a Word file for later. If desired, I could finish and post.