New England Brewing Company Yeasts

[Bribie G]

I'm booked in for a couple of nights at Uralla NSW week after next.

God has commanded me to stay at the motel two doors down the street from the New England brewery, and we will be there when the cellar bar and brewery is open, hope to get a tour and yak to a brewer or two.

I see from the website that they use open fermentation for their Saisons, Belgians and regular Ales with their own yeast strains and that the bottled beers are all bottle conditioned.

First question is going to be whether they use a "bottling" strain separate from their primary strains or, if not, if I'd be able to reculture for personal HB use. Their pale ale is a pretty nice drop (had some at Glen Innes last year). ed: they say "American Ale" on their site but hopefully it's adapted to life in a real brewery and I'd love to try it out in a home setting to see if it behaves differently to other Chico yeasts.

 

[technobabble66]

Obviously you'll need to do a lot of testing, as well as emptying enough bottles to provide sufficient yeast for doing a starter or 2 :icon_cheers:
(assuming the ferment & prime all with the 1 strain per beer/style)

 

[tugger]

Just ask for some of their yeast.
They can only say no.

 

[Bribie G]

I think I've worked out how to get in from the back. Now all I need is a black hoodie and something to knock out the rottweilers.

ed: what got me thinking was a talk by Chris White's offsider at the Brisbane HB conference a few years ago where he said that their own strains, in a HB setting definitely change and sort of "mature" to style if used in a few subsequent brews.
That's what definitely happens with recultured Coopers yeasts for example, they start Pear like and after a few brews tend to go Banana like.

Keen to try some "real" brewery yeast as opposed to the plain virgin stuff from packet or smack pack, and see how it goes.

 

[hirschb]

My guess is that they do not use a "bottling strain." Normally you use a bottling strain with sour beers that have been aged for many months, leaving the sacch yeasts dead/depleted. With the styles of beers these guys are making, they are not aging their beers long enough to kill off their yeasts, thus there is no need for them to add another yeast strain at bottling.
Without asking the brewers, there is no way of knowing whether they bank their yeast or re-pitch from batch to batch. With the latter method, you'll get some genetic drift, and the yeast characteristics may change over time. A lot of breweries that re-pitch almost exclusively will still bank their yeasts just in case their in-use yeasts evolve into something not as good.
Given that they bottle condition their beers, all you need to do is a buy a bottle or two and culture up the dregs. I do it with sour beers all the time.

 

[Mardoo]

Plenty of brew pubs in the States are happy to share their yeast. Can't hurt to ask. Just make sure you have something sanitary to put it in.