Also worth noting that the latest DNA sequencing results suggests S-23 is a Frohberg yeast that is the closest known relative to Wyeast 2001-PC “Pilsner Urquell H-Strain” Almost as related are WLP940 Mexican Lager and WLP515 Antwerp Ale, it’s not surprising that a famous yeast would end up being exported to other countries.
I recently made two versions of my house beer back to back with different hops to do a comparison, and until I introduced a palate cleanser I couldn’t tell the difference. First impression of the first beer was fine, but the second was impossible. Eating a piece of bread made a big difference.
There was a recent podcast by Escarpment Labs featuring Kristoffer Krogerus talking about lager yeast genetics. One take away was that all of the commercial lager strains from White Labs and Wyeast are Frohburg strains. No Saaz strains are available. The Czech Brewers use Frohburg strains. Saaz strains are available through the yeast collections, for a price.
Years back I had read that Frohburg were used by German brewers, Saaz by Czech Brewers, but that was wrong.
Thought I would put this here. There genetic differences in lager yeast are small compared to ale yeasts.
No Saaz strains are available from certain US homebrew yeast labs. That doesn’t mean they’re not used commercially, it just reflects decisions made by CUHYL when choosing strains, in the same way as their selections of British yeast do not reflect the fact that around half of British commercial brewing yeast strains are phenolic to some degree.
True within the families, but I’d suggest the fact that Saaz have three sets of chromosomes and Frohberg have four sets is a pretty major genetic difference!
It seems that Saaz originated in samples sent out by Carlsberg and Frohberg originated at Heineken (as far as we can tell), presumably reflecting random selections made of ??Czech?? original multistrains.
That is true. This guy is Suregork. His blog is where we learned that 800 and 838 are ale yeasts, and some “ale” strains are lagers genetically. I think he knows.
Evidence today says that there was one hybridization event. The Saaz strains lost a Sac. C. Chromosome. It is more cold tolerant, but not as stable (I think I got that right).
I was lazy before, and didn’t post the link. I think you will enjoy this talk.
Apologies for being a little late to the conversation on this. I used 34/70 for years for all my lagers. It is incredibly forgiving of fermentation temperature, and it is squeaky clean. So clean that I always felt that it was missing something - that faint sulfur note that I pick up in most European lagers. I also feel that it tends to mute hop expression a bit.
I tried S-189 and once I got it dialed in, I switched to using it for the majority of my lagers. It gives that hint of sulfur that I like, and I think it does a better job at accentuating hop character - spicy noble hops like Saaz in particular. One thing I’ve found is that it is not as forgiving as 34/70 with temperature. I pitch it at 40F, then set my chamber to 45F for the first 4-5 days before slowly ramping temps up.
What’s the max temp you would recommend for it? I used to brew with 34/70 a lot, then I switched to liquid strains for basically the same reason as Ken. But I’m looking to go back to using a lot more dry strains. 34/70 was always very temp forgiving. I would often ferment it in the mid 60’s; or at the very least, start it at 60F then let it free rise to 66F. Any reason S-189 couldn’t be treated the same way?
The one time I tried pitching S-189 at 55 then let it rise to 62, it was probably the worst lager I ever brewed. Fruity with solvent notes. I’m not sure how high you can push it, and I’m not really looking to experiment since I know low and slow works well.
