The last 5 minutes of this podcast surpriseed me. Live Oak Brewing, known for their Czecch ‘Pilz’ thought their house yeast was a Saazer strain but DNA testing determined it to be a Frohberg strain. The yeast genome project found the available lager strains from suppliers were Frohberg. Now Escarpment Labs in Guelph Ontario has a Saazer strain 1513 available, and Live Oak is going to brew a batch with it.
Some might be interested in this information. I looked at Escarpment and didn’t see that specifically. You might want to contact them if really interested.
Go to 55:00 into the podcast to hear the yeast discussion.
They are referring to CBS 1513, which is Carlsberg Unterhere No. 1. CBS 1513 is the world’s first pure lager culture as well as the type strain for the Saaz family of lager strains. It was isolated at Carlsberg Labs in 1883 by Emil Christian Hansen. It is also known as Saccharomyces carlsbergensis. Carlsberg Unterhefe No. 1 along with the Christian Schmidt strain much pretty dominated lager brewing in the United States at one point. The thing about CBS 1513 is that Carlsberg also made the Carlsberg flask yeast propagator design available to brewers. Carslberg was very generous to the lager brewing community.
If you look at the yeast family tree on the Suregork site, you will see that Wyeast 2035 groups with W-34/70 via a common ancestor. Wyeast 2035 descends from the Christian Schmidt strain, which means that the Christian Schmidt strain more than likely descends from the same parent as W-34/70 or started out as W-34/70. W-34/70 is the type strain for the Frohberg family having originated at the Frohberg brewery in Grimma, Saxony. The source information for W-34/70 is in a book that was published in 1931 entitled “Biologische Brauerei-Betriebs-Kontrolle” by H. Heller. It is on page 76 of the book.
I do not read German, but I can grok enough from the text to know that the author was discussing W-34/70 followed by CBS 1513 Carlsberg Unterhefe No. 1. The author was incorrect about W-34/70 being a Saaz culture, but he did not have the advantage of genetic sequencing in 1931. A lot of cultures that were previously assumed to be Saaz cultures turned out to be Frohberg cultures after being genetically sequenced.
Does it matter if their yeast strain is Saazer or Frohberg if it matches the flavor profile they’re looking for? I’ve read that WLP was considered a czech/saazer strain, until DNA evidence showed otherwise.
They have some awesome blog posts (Escarpment). Richards post on pitching rate is the most accessible document I’ve seen on the subject (Please prove me wrong, I can only learn).
I’ve been blown out of the water by the smoked malt I’ve gotten from Sugar Creek Malt, but man Live Oak looks incredible to visit. I’ll take a pass on the german beers, but I’ll take a smoked beer and 9 holes.
For me, it is a curiosity thing. If Emil Hansen acquired his original culture from Bohemia, then it tells us that that culture may have had Saaz and Frohberg strains as well as cryotolerant Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains in it. However, then again, Bohemian brewers may have gone back to the Bavarian well. To be honest, I do not get the Carlsberg-Bohemia connection.
Escarpment refers to it as “Uno Lager” currently.
Pretty excited to be able to get my hands on this yeast!
Thanks to Jeff Rankert for highlighting the availability of this strain through Escarpment Labs out to me.
I’m guessing we’ll have a bunch of people starting to ferment beers with this yeast by End July / early August.
We also did a bulk-buy of whole-leaf Saaz hops a couple of months ago from Hopandstuff.com (which is AFAIK, the ONLY source for whole leaf Czech Saaz hops in the US in 2026), so Seattle’s Eastside will probably be overflowing with homebrewed Czech-style lagers late this summer / early this fall.
I’m not sure if I’m a bad influence, or a good one, but happy with the result either way.
