Well, I can confirm that Y-7408 is not a true top-cropper. It is also definitely not Siebel BRY-96. So far, it is like a more attenuative version of Whitbread B. Well, its flocculation pattern resembles that of Whitbread B, but its flavor and attentuation pattern is different. Y-7408 is fruity, very attenuative, and produces low levels of higher alcohols. It took at a 1.070 wort down to 1.012.
Y-7408 is available as ECY10 Old Newark Ale.
I used ECY old newark ale yeast a handful of times, for me it produced a massive krausen that stuck around forever.
It formed a large foam krausen, but no yeast head. I skimmed the krausen thinking that it would produce a yeast head.
your yeast studies are intriguing, what kind of containers do you use when you find the attributes of yeasts? pyrex flasks, small carboys? just curious, i don’t think i will be getting into this kind of stuff anytime soon, but still.
I do not do anything special with a new yeast culture except pay close attention to its performance characteristics. I make assumptions as to its performance and modify my approach based on my observations. I guess where I differ from a lot of brewers is that I will pitch yeast cultures with no known performance data. I did that a lot when I was getting cultures from culture collections. Most of the time the only data that I would get was that the culture came from a brewery as well as its genus and species. One thing I will say is that one needs to be willing to dump beer when playing with yeast at this level. That is why I kept my recipes simple for so many years. I knew what the base recipe produced. Any difference would be the work of the yeast culture. It is the basic scientific method of changing only one variable and observing the outcome.
Y-7408 took the batch down to 1.010 by the time I kegged the beer. That is an astonishing level of apparent attenuation. Yet, the beer does not taste hot or thin. The ester/flavor profile is more British than American.
Y-7408 is one of the best English-style IPA yeast strains I have used. The downside is that it strips late hop flavor and aroma to some extent, so those additions have to be augmented by careful dry hopping. However, it is definitely British.
So, are you going to use it again? or does the lack of a yeast head ruin it for you?
I find most English yeasts take the hard edges off of flavors. For example, to me the bitterness from hops and roasted malts is mellowed with many English yeasts. I like that especially in regards to roasted malts. Stripping some late hop flavor and aroma seems like an acceptable price to pay for that mellowing effect.
What distinguishes American strains from British? Did they not largely originate from Britain? (I don’t know, just wondering as it seems likely). If so, did they change character over time after crossing the Atlantic and all assume a new, American character? Do all British strains display British character?
I find a wide variety here in GB, with some strains that have a low ester profile. I guess we just mean that American strains tend towards neutral and British towards fruity? I get the impression from reading forums that American brewers have a tendency to want neutral and there’s a lot of advice to keep fermentation temperatures in the low 60s centigrade at the start etc. I know this isn’t universal there but it’s a transatlantic difference, I think? The English manner is to go for estery yeast and lower hops, but English styles are under heavy attack from the Americanisation of beer, especially in the big cities. Unfortunately.
That said, the New England beers of recent years tend to utilise the fruitiness of English strains, like ‘Conan’ and London III, which has boosted their popularity. Is this yeast fruitiness creeping into other styles in America? Do English styles have any traction over there? English hops?
Forgive me if I being simplistic it talking nonsense from a few thousand miles away, just wondering about the possible differences in British and American yeast tastes I think. And worrying a bit about the gradual loss of our beer culture. Under 30s here are almost entirely drinking macro lagers and American craft styles, it seems to me, with a few going for the sours and weizens that have become more available with the craft thing.
You make a good point. I was definitely generalizing about English yeasts. You’re right they are not all fruity and many are clean. In fact, I think most of the “American“ clean yeasts were originally selected from clean English yeast varietals.
I repitched the culture in a rye ale that I made last weekend. It will be interesting to see what it does with that style.
The lack of yeast head just makes a culture more difficult to manage over the long haul. True top-croppers are easier to maintain because they are naturally purifying due to the fact that bacteria and wild yeast do not floc to the top. I am trying to avoid keeping yeast cultures on slant. That was fun when it was necessary, but it is a lot of work.
Yes, my feeling is that the differentiation between American and English strains is perhaps a bit spurious. Although you have strains over there that have obviously evolved through use and via the selection process which perhaps could now be said to have American characteristics. I’m no expert, just wondering about it.
I’ve got this perverse notion that the NEIPA is a step in the evolution of American beers that will end up with English pales being the norm there. They have taken on fruity English yeasts. The bitterness has dropped to regular levels. Clarity is now being accepted, I believe? Next step is boredom with tropical hop overload, leading to a clamour for English hops, resulting in English IPAs! And then APAs will follow suit.
Could happen! 
I’m sure there’s room for both.
Starting with the early microbreweries, East Coast craft brewers have tended to lean more British than American when making ale. NEIPA is just the latest incarnation of East Coast IPA, which used to be a lot closer to British-style IPA. The difference between IPA on the different coasts has a lot to do with Alan Pugsley installing a lot of Peter Austin systems in micro and pub breweries up and down the East Coast in the late eighties through the nineties. The first microbrewery to open since prohibition in Maryland was founded by two brits; namely, Steve Parkes and Craig Stuart-Paul. If one looks at second generation East Coast microbreweries such as Dogfish Head in Delaware, their standard ale styles are more English than American. A lot of American IPAs taste like hop tea to me because most of the hop charges used in making these beers are late additions, not Dogfish Head’s 60 and 90-minute IPA. They are both firmly bitter ales.
What is interesting is that the family of ale yeast cultures that we refer to as “American” are pretty much all descendants of Siebel BRY-96 (even Lallemand’s BRY-97 is a descendent of BRY-96). For a long time, it was assumed that BRY-96 was Ballantine’s culture. Many of us knew that BRY-96 came from Narragansett, but assumed that it originated at Ballantine because Falstaff moved production of Ballantine’s products to Narragansett when it shuttured the Ballantine brewing complex in Newark, New Jersey. It was not until research at University of Washington confirmed that BRY-96 is not related to Y-4808 (Ballantine’s ale culture) that things clicked with me. The reception date for BRY-96 at Siebel predates Falstaff moving production of Ballantine’s ale products to Narragansett, so it appears that the most popular yeast strain in West Coast-style craft ale brewing originated in Rhode Island. I suspect that BRY-96 was used to produce Ballantine’s ale products at Narragansett. I know that my father and grandfather both said that Ballantine ale changed after production was moved to Rhode Island. Like most beer drinkers of that time, they assumed the difference in taste was more a function if using a different water source than a different ale yeast. What is interesting about Narragansett is that it was founded by German immigrants, so BRY-96 may have origins in Germany. In many ways, BRY-96 is more like an German ale yeast culture than a British ale culture, but that is just speculation. Rhode Island had a thriving ale brewing scene up until the mid-twentieth century, so the yeast culture could have been passed around the area for a long time before it found its way to the Siebel collection.
Very interesting thanks. So Bry-96 is the forefather of American strains and probably originates from Europe, with Germany seeming most likely? Makes some sense.
I wouldn’t say that Germany is necessarily “most likely” but it’s certainly a good guess. Narragansett was a lager brewery but acquired Hanley’s brands in the late 1950s. James Hanley was the godfather of RI Brewing. He was an Irish immigrant who got his start as a distributor of Burton Ales before opening several of the largest breweries in RI around the turn of the century. Their Ales are their best known beers. The James Hanley brewery was the only RI brewery to survive prohibition intact.
So there are cases to be made that BRY-96 could be of German origin (via Carl Haffenreffer at Gansett), or either Irish or Burton if it came via Hanley.
Ah I see - thanks. Has any DNA work revealed anything?
We discussed the Hanley connection when I first breached the subject of BRY-96 being a Narragansett culture and not Ballantine’s ale culture (I even purchased a Hanley wall clock for my brewery). I made the mistake that most people make when they think of Narragansett. We all assumed that BRY-96 originally came from Ballantine when production was moved from the Ballantine complex in Newark, New Jersey because Narragansett was a lager brewer. However, a search of Narragansett breweriana revealed that Narragansett historically brewed ale and lager. Here’s a link to a Pre-Prohobition bottle in which Narragansett Half Stock Banquet ale was sold: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/pre-pro-1918-narragansett-beer-half-420676231 Narragansett brewed ale after Prohibition as well. BRY-96 is a unique enough that it and its descents group together by themselves, which could mean that the yeast culture may have been selected under pressure on the East Coast over a long period of time, making it a truly American culture in much the same way that Cluster is truly an American hop cultivar. What we do know is that ale brewing on the East Coast was profitable up though the 1950s. Ballantine reached its peak in the fifties. After which, it started to lose market share to lager brewers. Hanley was apparently profitable up to the mid-fifties. We lost the one guy a couple of years ago who could give us more clues as to the origin of BRY-96; namely, Bill Anderson. Bill was the brewmaster at Narragansett when BRY-96 was deposited into the Siebel Culture Collection.
I’d love to know about potential irish yeasts. i did hear a bit about irish beer production from the 1700s to present, but not the always mysterious yeast.
so obviously the “irish ale” yeast WLP004/etc is guinness, but am not sure if (though assume) it’s origin is english. as guinness was set up to be a profitable company, rather than a preservation of a beer tradition.
murphy’s, beamish yeast sources?