Wye Valley - primary strain in bottles - confirmed

[Bobba]

Here's some correspondence I've had with an extremely helpful headbrewer at Wye Valley...

We sterile filter our beers and then seed with a measured quantity of clean yeast culture. The yeast is the same as that used for primary fermentation and is our own strain. The reason for doing this is to give us total control over the quantity of the yeast in the bottle and also to ensure that no bugs are present.

only comment I might make is that our yeast is not particularly alcohol tolerant and with Country being a strong beer and the yeast having been in contact with it for quite a while, it may not be in the rudest health!
Good luck with it and I would be interested to hear how it turns out.

It is indeed single strain.

I'm just waiting for the condensation to die down on some Agar plates I've prepared, and then I'll get going on this one. Planning to plate it out, isolate some single colonies, and then culture a few of them up for a taste/flocculation test (not in the mood for another low flocculating bottling yeast). I'll then pick the best and stick it on a slant ready for the next brew....and report back here of course!

[RichardG]

Hi Bobba; I realise your original post wasn't that long ago, but I was wondering if you'd made any progress.

[Bobba]

Hey Richard,
I had a good go at it a few weeks back. Managed to culture up some single colonies on the agar plates, and cultures them all up in small starters. When I went to taste them however, they were all sour, with FG's very low. I also put the individual colonies onto individual slants, so I've still got them to have another go. I probably didn't sterilise my starter wort properly or something.
There was definitely yeast growing in there though, with a healthy amount at the bottom of the starters, and it flocculated very well, so despite the infection in these, it looks quite promising.
I'll report back when I get chance to have another go at it

[redkite]

Sorry to dissappoint but been in touch with Emma at Wye Valley Brewery & she has confirmed that the yeast strain in their bottle conditioned beers is indeed asecondary bottling strain & not primary as stated

[Bobba]

Hi Redkite, Are you sure? It was only back in June that the head brewer told me that it was their primary strain, as noted above

[redkite]

I can only confirm the reply Emma at Wye Valley gave me. Perhaps you can contact her yourself inorder to absolutely sure. Maybe she misunderstood my query when I asked her whether the strains were either primary or bottling strains. She can be contacted on - Sales@wyevalleybrewery.co.uk
Best of luck Bobba
Carl

[Ben711200]

Holy thread resurrection!

I bought a bottle of Wye Valley Brewery Butty Bach today and noticed it was bottle conditioned. It also has an ingredients list as follows

Water; Malt: Pale Malt, Flaked Barley, Wheat, Crystal Malt; Hops: Fuggles, Goldings, Bramling Cross; Yeast: Wye Valley Brewery own strain.


Ignoring that it is a 2 year old conversation for a moment, I would presume the head brewer to have been correct and Emma to have slightly misinterpreted the question asked, since it is filtered and re-seeded it could be considered a secondary yeast, even though the same strain.


I've bumped the thread though, because I've no idea of the characteristics of the yeast. Has anyone used it? Would you use it again? Can you compare it to any yeasts commercially available? Is it worth me bothering to grow up a starter from the bottle is what I'm trying to ask

Cheers!

[Wezzel]

I've got a batch of Butty Bach in the fermenter at the moment. I used Wyeast 1335 English ale yeast but if it turns out okay I would love to try it again with the proper yeast.

[Ben711200]

I thoroughly enjoyed the bottle of Butty Bach and figured there'd be no real work in making up a starter.. I'll report back