Any opinions?
One thing I know is that you already know these yeasts. MJ has no yeast manufacturing operations, they just purchase and repackage Fermentis and Lallemand yeasts.
Love the lager yeasts M84 Bohemian and M76 Bavarian. I prefer M76 due to its higher attenuation while accentuating malt character.
Interesting to here that they just repackage. I would be curious to see the Fermentis and Lallemand equivalents as I didn’t know either had a California Lager yeast for example. Are you saying that the MJ yeasts are made by Fermentis/Lallemand but don’t distribute these strains under their own companies?
There’s information about this on suregork’s blog, in the posts on the genomic studies and strain IDs, including references to correspondence with MJ by a commenter there. The California lager is actually repackaged from Mauribrew. The vast majority are Fermentis and Lallemand though. They are the regular yeasts from those companies. M-76 for instance is the Weihenstephan 34/70 strain, so it’s repackaged either from Lallemand Diamond Lager or Saflager W-34/70 (don’t know which source specifically.) M-84 may be S-23. They don’t have anything made exclusively. Apparently they are just filling a gap in yeast distribution on the bottom side of the world. Check the thread here on dmtaylor’s yeast chart, he has some equivalents identified.
Hmmm. Interesting. M76 is nothing like Fermentis W34/70 in my opinion and with everything bad I’ve heard about S-23 I don’t see how M84 could be the same. I love S-189 but they are very different from that as well. Just my experience of course as I am ignorant to the crazy stuff going on with yeast studies. I have no idea what Mauribrew is so I will check it out. I was just using the cali lager yeast as an example. Thanks for the info. I will go back to my cave…
Robert, that is an amazing find. In a way, I can understand why they do it. There are many strains that the true manufacturer’s do not package for homebrewers. You can only get those in half kilo bricks.
Very Interesting!
MJ is also generally cheaper. They must have much smaller profit margin.
do you think thats why they sell 1.5 grams less in mj packs?
Which is why I’m curious about them. Morebeer has 34/70 for $7, not much less than Wyeast at $7.50.
Sure the price looks close at first glance. But when you’re talking about shipping liquid yeast vs. dry, the cost per cell that gets to you still viable is another story!
I have used quite a few MJ yeasts.
M84- makes a malty Lager. It attenuates less than I would like. My export lager came out sweet. I didn’t like the sweetness there. My Boston lager clone was very malty and tasty with this yeast.
M76- seems like 34/70. Clean crisp lager. I can’t promise it is 34/70 or not. I have not done a side by side. I have fermented up to 54F with this one. I am fermenting a batch at 58F now to see how that affects taste.
M54- pretty clean crisp lager fermented at 62F. Not as clean as M76.
M44- nice clean ale yeast. I don’t think it is US-05 because there is no peach flavor. It may be same as Bry97. Both have slow lag times. I tried a lager with this one. Not great. I didn’t like the esters. But, works great for APA’s and Ambers.
M36- I like this one for English beers. It is not WLP002. I think it attenuates more and the fruit flavors are a bit different. This is closer to S04 but still not the same. I swear I get an orange marmalade ester from M36. I don’t get that from S04.
One pack of these yeasts are just fine for my 3 gallon batches.
^^^^
I am an orange marmalade eater.
I fixed that typo so now no one will get your joke.
We should all eat more marmalade if only so we can say marmalade more often.