Recent Heady cans

Yup, those are pretty much my results exactly when using commercial Conan strains vs. harvested HT dregs, although I never used subsequent generations.

 

I definitely agree. Anyone who works for a business has to decide how much information they can share. I appreciate when coders, chefs, brewers, etc. share their code/recipes, however, I also understand that market forces play a role in whether one shares this information. If I worked for years on a beer recipe I'd probably be cautious about who I share it with.

I'd be interested in what J Kimmich thinks about this.

 

I've seen that recipe, and plan to brew it sometime. Do you have a link that additional information that John provided? I'd be interested to hear what he thinks is ok to share and what isn't.

 

Obviously, John is a fantastic brewer and I've learned a lot from his interviews and have been inspired by him on many occasions. However, I think this may be a way of trying to deter breweries from using their yeast. In each can, you have strong cells, although the more repitches that have been used for each batch, the less strong cells you'd have. By isolating colonies, it is easy to determine which ones are the strong colonies. Those are the colonies that reputable yeast labs will be propagating from.

ETA: John is one of the brewers I look up to the most. I can't blame him for wanting to keep secrets about their brewing processes. Plus, if he was as open as a lot of brewers are, we wouldn't be able to have the bi-weekly discussions of what makes NEIPA's cloudy, or if cloudiness is a positive aspect of these beers

 

Weedy, a number of homebrewers have reported that when they utilize the Conan yeast strain from various vendors (e.g., GigaYeast) they have experienced poor attenuation. If the vendors were able to select/obtain "strong" cells, why would attenuation performance be so off?

Cheers!

@telejunkie

 

Sounds like a question for the yeast lab to me. I'm not going to criticize or theorize why a lab's yeast would be subpar when it shouldn't be. I use Imperial Organic and have never seen any irregularities in attenuation

 

@JackHorzempa, I didn't intend for that to sound stand offish! I just don't know anything about GigaYeast and I would hate to theorize about their processes only to find out that they had one bad lot of yeast, or that they traced the problems back to the brewers, or whatever.

All I can say with certainty is that there shouldn't be anything inherently wrong with cultivating yeast from the can because there should be strong yeast cells that will form colonies in isolations. Nick at Yeast Bay has discussed this a few times. I would share an e-mail he wrote to me a year ago, but it includes some choice language and I wouldn't want it to look like he was taking an attack at John when John's name never came up in that conversation.

 

Weedy, below is something that Dave Green (@telejunkie) posted in a previous thread:

“Here is an excerpt my Q&A with Kimmich :
Timing of dry hop addition. Do you ever prefer to have the hops interact with the yeast (biotransformation on hop oils) before primary is finished?

No, I chill the beer before dry hopping. My personal opinion is that the aroma can be diminished by contact with active yeast. I do not experience D.O. Pickup by chilling first.

If you don't prefer any interaction, do you ever add any finings to your beer prior to dry hopping?

I do not. Our yeast is highly flocculant”

So John Kimmich reported that The Alchemist yeast strain is “highly flocculant”.

Below are all of the homebrewing commercial sources I know of for Conan yeast:

East Coast Yeast company:

“ECY29 Northeast Ale : A unique ale yeast with an abundance of citrusy esters accentuating American-style hops in any pale ale, IPA, double IPA. Low flocculation. Attenuation: 73-75%; suggested fermentation temperature: 65-70F.”


Yeast Bay:

“Vermont Ale

$8.50

Isolated from a uniquely crafted double IPA out of the Northeastern United States, this yeast produces a balanced fruity ester profile of peaches and light citrus that complements any aggressively hopped beer. Expect this strain to take off fast and ferment wort quickly, though elevating the temperature following the bulk of fermentation may be required to raise the attenuation.

In order to achieve high attenuation, we recommend fermenting at 64-68 ºF for 5-7 days, and then raising the temperature to 70 ºF until a stable gravity is reached. We also recommend mashing at 148-149 ºF and adding a small percentage of the fermentables (~ 5-10%) as sugar.

Attenuation has also been reported to increase when repitching after the first generation.

Temperature: 64 - 70 ºF

Attenuation: 75 - 82%

Flocculation: Medium-Low”



Gigayeast:

“Vermont IPA Yeast GY054

Attenuation Medium Gravity* 78% – 82%

Attenuation High Gravity* 74% – 76% (10.0% – 10.6% ABV)

Temperature Range†: 62˚F – 75˚F

Flocculation: Medium/Low



Imperial Yeast:

“A04 Barbarian

Ready to attack your IPA, Barbarian produces stone fruit esters that work great when paired with citrus hops. Barbarian will give you what you need for an exceptionally balanced IPA.

Temp: 62-70 // Flocculation: Medium


Not a single one of those four vendors described their yeast strains as being “highly flocculant”.

Needless to say that John Kimmich should know his yeast but I am at a loss how to reconcile what he is saying vs. the four yeast vendors’ descriptions.

It seems to me that not only is attenuation in question but the flocculation performance as well.

Cheers!

@telejunkie

 

I think the quote about flocculation probably needs to be taken with a grain of salt. IMO, if there is enough yeast in a can to propagate from the can as easily as people do with HT, that's a lot of yeast.

Also, at Blue Pants I had switched all of our core beers to being fermented with Imperial Organic's Barbarian and our Amber Ale which wasn't dry hopped and had just a small amount of hops in the kettle cleared easily after being cold crashed for 3-4 days, at least more so than when we were using 1056, so I can say that my experience is that their Barbarian is more flocculent than 1056 is.

 

Are you referring to the quote by John Kimmich of “Our yeast is highly flocculant”? If so, why does this need to be taken with a grain of salt?

Or are you referring to the quotes from the various yeast vendors?

· East Coast: “Low flocculation.”

· Yeast Bay: “Flocculation: Medium-Low”

· Gigayeast: “Flocculation: Medium/Low”

· Imperial Yeast: “Flocculation: Medium”

Cheers!

 

I'm referring to John's quote. The reason I'd say that is because for a lab to describe a yeast strain as highly flocculant, the yeast should produce brilliantly clear beer without the use of finings, there should be no reason to filter the beer. If you cold crash a beer with Wyeast 1968 for example (Imperial's Pub Yeast), in my experience with everything from 15 bbl to 60 bbl fermenters, the beer is brilliantly clear in 2-3 days. If you look at the beer in a hemacytometer, it would be very rare to see even one yeast cell in undilluted beer. If John's process is as stated, and in other interviews he says that they dry hop for 4 days, than there is no way the amount of yeast in the can should still be there if it is highly flocculant as defined by a yeast lab.

 

Is there an objective metric for how much yeast remains in a bottle or can for differentiating highly flocculent vs. medium flocculent vs. low flocculation?

For example, you made mention of 1968. I have homebrewed with 1968 and yet there is still plenty of yeast left in the beer for me to conduct bottle conditioning.

Cheers!

 

Flocculation should be something that is defined by the presence or absence of the 12 genes that influence flocculation rather than how much yeast is left in a package due to differences in processes. However, not very much yeast is needed for bottle conditioning. SNPA for example still appears filtered even though it is bottle conditioned. I believe a few years ago they switched to filtering or centrifuging their beer and then repitching a set amount of yeast for conditioning. Sweetwater recently started doing some bottle conditioning as well and their beers have a similar appearance.

 

But yet as I ferment a beer using a single pure strain of yeast, some cells flocculate earlier in the fermentation process and others cells lag behind (e.g., the yeast cells still present for bottle conditioning). All of these yeast cells have the same genes but behave differently during the fermentation process.

Cheers!

 

That's true, but it sounds like you're assuming that 100% of the yeast left in suspension are lowly flocculent or weaker yeast cells. Each repitch of yeast will result in fewer good yeast cells to propagate from, but the more yeast in suspension, and the closer you are to the first generation, the more likely you are to succeed in getting a good quality culture. Even the strongest, most flocculent yeast won't necessarily settle out in a conical fermenter due to convection cells, or disturbance in a transfer, or when the person conducting the transfer moves the racking arm, hits the yeast cake and raised the racking arm back up, they pick up good yeast and it goes into the brite. When we talk about layers of dead yeast, good yeast, and young yeast in a conical, that is theoretical. The truth is, you get good yeast and bad yeast in each layer, just in higher concentrations at each layer. Even without doing isolation streaks, the best yeast will out compete the poor yeast with good handling in propagation from the can.

 

I think the term is "dusty" if I remember right... not necessarily mutant, just less/later floccing

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Microscope_use_in_brewing

FTR: no attenuation problems here with GigaVermont

 

In the same way that human twins or triplets or quads behave differently from their siblings. When they go off to school in the morning, one of them has to be the first out the door. And one of them has to be last. But it won't necessarily be the same ones each day. But on average, one set of multiples may behave differently than a different set of (genetically different) multiples, e.g. the Smith twins may tend to be early-ish while the Jones twins may tend to be late-ish.

I also think there's something slightly bizarre about an assumption that the last yeast cells to flocculate from a batch are somehow weaker... Like they are strong enough to hang around and keep eating (and carbonating bottles of beer for example), but are just too weak to grab onto another cell and fall.

 

First, no comment on recent changes in the HT yeast because I haven't used it in almost 2 years (haven't used many yeasts for that matter, too occupied with non-beer BS). I have always cultured it up from a can, no experience with the commercial suppliers.

It is definitely possible to make clear beer with Heady dregs, in my case a pale ale and a cream ale. Nothing unusual about the ingredients or fermentation, standard recipes fermented at 62-64F. IMO, it pays to keep the starter cool and step it up gradually.

I think the number of generations the yeast in the can has been used matters; it gets underattenuative and clovey tasting near the end of its cycle. A skilled tech could salvage this culture, selecting the best cells, but it's easier to just try another can. Should not be an issue with commercial suppliers.

I think there are multiple reasons for the cloudiness of NE IPA's, not always the same with every brewer. John is on the record as having added oats to the boil for an oatmeal stout... maybe something similar going on. Of course that was for a brewpub beer that would be consumed quickly on draft, not sure how that would translate to packaging.

John has called me out in the past for quickly formulated or shaky opinions. Maybe he will weigh in here...

 

I am simply pointing out that the yeast left in suspension did not flocculate earlier in fermentation. Is that not an appropriate observation?

I personally have no comment here since I am a homebrewer vs. a commercial brewer. While there is much commonality in brewing (commercial vs. homebrewer) there is also a number of differences.

That may be the case but a number of homebrewers have commented that the performance of the commercially available Conan yeast strains differ both in the aspect of attenuation and flocculation performance.

It sounds like you in a commercial brewery have had some good experience with the Imperial Yeast strain while using a cold crash process. This does not translate in general (all yeast vendors, all homebrewing methods, ...) into homebrewers being able to replicate what you achieved while brewing at Blue Pants Brewery.

Cheers!