Dave, I have 100% verified info on the origins of 05. No matter what that chart says.
I understand. There must be some magic in the drying process then, or coming up with a version that can withstand drying. Not all individual strains are up to the task. They might have had to fiddle around a bit to get a version that didn’t mind the drying process.
Or… they have simply diverged at the different labs over time. Perhaps that is even more likely.
AFAIK, the drying process itself can cause mutations. Which is why some manufacturers have chosen not to do dry yeast.
Could it also be that the original source wasn’t a pure monoculture?
Not likely.
The peachy-apricot thing seems to be very unique to US-05 so there is something about it, clearly. I’ve heard too many brewers mention it. I do happen to be a “neutral” yeast brewer. I make a lot of lagers and I am almost always using Omega Bayern, WL940 or 2124. I LOVE the character of all three of those lager strains. When I brew with an ale yeast it’s almost always some version of 1056/001/Omega West Coast, etc. or something English. I don’t like it when my yeast does something I’m not expecting.
US-05 throws that peach flavor at lower temps ime, I ferment at 70 and it’s clean as a whistle
I don’t think S-04 is particularly neutral either though
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Any phylogeneticists out there who can comment on interpreting that tree? I’m not a gene squeezer (the things I reconstruct trees for have been dead for 66+ million years, so no DNA or at least in any quantity that’s useful for tree reconstruction), but I do know that gene trees can’t always be interpreted as literal family trees, especially for things like yeast that pass DNA around willy-nilly.
My very loose and only semi-informed reading of the tree is that it’s not necessarily at odds with 1056 being the source strain to US-05, especially because they are sister branches (these sorts of diagrams only show the closest relatives for an organism, not ancestor/descendant relationships, and if you have rapidly diverging branches it complicates things further).
I feel like S-04 has an English ale character with that slightly bready and minerally profile. I like a lot of the liquid English ale strains … 1469, 1099, 1028, 1968, etc. S-04 gives me some of that and it flocs really nicely. The attenuation is lower (as many English ale strains are) so plan accordingly and it does produce diacetyl pretty reliably so be prepared for that too.
I’m not a geneticist. What I do KNOW, regardless of actual relationships, is that these strains all perform noticeably differently from one another.
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Yeah, and that’s something so many don’t realize. Just because yeasts have the same heritage doesn’t mean they’ll produce the same result.
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