Seeking Conan experience.

NOT AN ATTORNEY and I sure as hell didn't stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night. I think the only way you'd get in any legal trouble for this would be if they actually called it Conan. For example, East Coast Yeast calls it ECY29 Northeast Ale.

 

From my understanding, you can't patent yeast plus ligitation would be next to impossible. Yeast mutate very quickly. I'm guessing that is why everyone has the chico strain (US-05, WLP001, WY1056). But like you, I am no lawyer so I can't say for sure.

 

Agreed. You can trademark a name for a yeast strain but because of how yeast mutate, I don't believe you can patent it.

 

I’ll start my update with a disclosure that this is my first try at both harvesting from a commercial brewer and at brewing a big beer; previous highest OG was 1055. So all feedback is extremely welcomed!

Today I racked to secondary after two weeks in primary. Good news so far, no signs of infection so I’m done well we a little victory for cleanliness. As for a little bummer, after two weeks gravity is down from 1084 OG to 1024, I’d have liked a lot lower; I’m hoping an FG around 1013. I put the airlock back on the primary and although I wasn’t getting real active CO2 release, it’s still pumping with just the yeast cake, which makes me think that maybe these big beers just take time to convert the sugar. Secondary will be around 4 to 6 weeks per recipe. What are my chances of dropping the desired 11 gravity points? If not achievable, what may I expect as a wild a$$ guess?

Getting ready for harvest and then cleaning:

 

I brewed twice with Conan, built from dregs of a can of HT. Once was an IPA that I did before, and it was over-attenuated with Conan. Be careful inserting it into random recipes. The IPA I normally do is something like 1.060OG 1.015FG, and has a tropical hop flavor/aroma. This yeast knocked it down even further, and gave it a bit more of a rough edge. Thinner, boozier.
However, when I cloned HT, it was perfect. Great yeast for something that needs more attenuation.

In your case I would wonder first about how stong your starter was, and second how strong the culture was. As previously noted, late generation conan isnt as high performing. It could be that conan is just tuckered out now. You could keep your fingers crossed and hope its just being lazy and will finish out a tad bit lower, you could add a small amount of sugar in secondary, or you could throw in a fresh bit o yeast.

 

Did you bring up the temp yet? My last beer with Conan dropped about 6-8 points after primary looked like it was finished, might have gotten even more out of it if I'd let it sit longer.

 

Thanks for the feedback, considering both adding more yeast and adding some corn sugar. The other option I'm thinking about is letting it ride. The gravity taste I had is drinking like a American barleywine and I'm thinking about replacing the dry hopping with bourbon oak chips.

 

Thanks for the feedback, but unfortunately temp control is not something I have a good handle on. I'm easing the wife in with buying the brewing equipment. I've not invested in temp control. Thou my basement is steady, too low at 56, the rest of the house isn't and I was anywhere from 68 to 74 with this brew.

 

have brewed 3 times with conan...all finished b/w 1.012-1.014 and mashed at ~152 with little in the way of unfermentables. planning to use a cake to do an KtG clone, hoping it gets down to 1.02 or so.

drink enough HT and you can tell approximately where the yeast gen is. I just waited until I had a good batch and have been reusing slurry from that since. will reharvest when it stops attenuating as I like.

 

Those are the numbers I typically get as well. Sometimes as low as 1.010.

 

I brewed an APA with conan that started at 1.058, and after two weeks at 65F it was at 1.020. I racked to secondary, dryhopped and increased to 70F. After a third week, I hit 1.013 which worked for me.

I have the same experience with Conan not being very flocculant. I cold crashed for 2 days in the secondary, and had a pretty serious cake at the bottom of the carboy.

I pitched a starter that was stepped dregs>500ml>1L>2L.

 

You can very easily patent it, and precisely for the reason it mutates so quickly (You're patenting a new strain of yeast), but because of that same reason suing someone for patent infringement would be incredibly difficult as you'd have to prove they have the exact strain within a reasonable doubt.

 

Limited run of YG001 Green Mountains Ale Yeast (Conan) is back in stock. Check my profile for the website. Cheers!

 

Just curious if you know when we can expect another release?