Like a lot of lager brands, Ballantine was Ballantine in name only post the move to Narragansett in Cranston, RI. Falstaff purchased the Ballantine brand and moved production to Narragansett in 1972. That is when the Ballantine complex in Newark, NJ was shuttered. Pabst acquired Ballantine when they acquired Falstaff.
BRY-97 was never on Siebel’s List of cultures. There may have been a culture 97 at one time, but it was not the same as what is sold today. According to Tobias Fischborn (a senior research scientist at Lallemand), the name BRY-97 was created by Lallemand for an isolate of BRY-96 with better fermentation characteristics.
“BRY97 is the dried form of the BRY96 strain from the Siebel Institute. It was deposited by Narragansett Brewing Co (Rhode Island) in 1967, so been around a while. The BRY96 was then supplied to Sierra Nevada in the 1980s, whether it was the original strain that became Chico…not sure.”
With that said, there is a hole in the Narragansett link. There appears to be no historical data that points to Narragansett producing ale before Falstaff moved production of Ballantine XXX to Narragansett. Narragansett was founded by German immigrants as a lager brewery. Narragansett was sold to Falstaff in 1965. BRY-97 was deposited in 1967. A possible source for the culture could have been the James Hanley Brewing Company in Providence (Eric where are you?), which was an ale brewery. James Hanley was an Irish immigrant. Narragansett could have acquired the strain after the Hanley brewery went out of business. Another explanation could be that the Narragansett lager culture was actually Saccharomyces cerevisiae instead of Saccharomyces pastorianus.
BRY-97 is actually an isolate from a brewery that used BRY-96. At this point, we can assume that that brewery was Sierra Nevada.
Here is a message I received from Chris Large at UW:
Wyeast 1056 is in fact an isolate of Sierra Nevada’s culture. BRY-97 has to be an isolate of Sierra Nevada’s culture as well.
It’s certainly possible that Gansett could have acquired Hanley’s cultures. It appears that they purchased the rights to all the Hanley brands after the Hanley brewery closed in 1957. Of course, purchasing the rights to the brands doesn’t necessarily mean that they were producing beer using the same ale strain. They didn’t acquire the brewery itself, however. The beer storage tanks were removed in 1960 and the building was demolished for the construction of Route 95.
Hanley was the man when it came to Rhode Island breweries in the pre-prohibition Era. Along with the Hanley brewery, he either founded or had his hands in the RI Brewing Company, the Providence Brewing Company and the American Brewing Company. James Hanley was the only of these to survive prohibition as far as I’m aware. The American Brewing Company was built in 1892 with industrial climate control systems for producing lager beers. The building hasn’t been used as a brewery since prohibition, but it’s still around. I drive by it every day on my commute.
Not much here to help unlock the mystery of Chico, but it certainly has invigorated my interest of Rhode Island brewing history.
I tried it out on a few beers and it was a true top cropper and crazy sulphurous mid to late fermentation.
To summarise and to remain on topic, is the consensus that Y-7407 (Ballentine Beer Pitching Strain) was banked at Siebel as BRY-96. This was then subsequently picked up by Sierra Nevada and has since become known as Chico. Lallemand released BRY-96 rather confusingly as BRY-97, and hence is the true dry form of SN’s Chico strain? Is this potentially a lager strain? How does the Narragansett deposit information tie in with all this?
Baseball is a famously boring American game made tolerable through beer and hot dogs. “Inside baseball” is a term referring to a discussion so technical or esoteric no quantity of beer or hot dogs could make it tolerable for the layperson.
BR-97 is an improved version of BR-96, and might be the source for 1056 is what I’m reading. 7407 is a lager strain, and not related to BR-96?
I had thought US05 was the Chico strain, is that not the case?
One of the SN personnel on a podcast said that the house strain is now more flocculant than the commercial Chico strains. If find it plausible that BRY-97 is the SN house strain.
I might try and bump up the SN yeast from bottles of Pale Ale. Anyone know that the use the same strain for bottling?
No, BRY-96 has a different, yet to be identified source. Chris Large is the graduate student on the team that is studying brewhouse mutations of BRY-96 and its offspring. Through genetic sequencing, the team has determined that BRY-96 does not descend from Y-7407 or Y-7408.
Ballantine was purchased by Falstaff in 1972. Falstaff had previously purchased Narragansett in 1965. When Falstaff closed Ballantine, production of Ballantine XXX ale was moved to Narragansett. We have all assumed that the ale culture was moved to Narragansett as well. However, it clearly was not moved if BRY-96 was deposited by Narragansett because the reception date for BRY-96 of 4/1/1967 predates the move by seven years. The original Siebel yeast culture publication stated that BRY-96 came from a brewery formerly operating on the East Coast. It was assumed that Ballantine was the brewery to whom Siebel was referring because Ballantine is the only defunct historical ale brewery anyone under age 80 or so can remember.
By the way, Y-7408 is a true top-cropper. It is rumored that the culture was brought to this country from Scotland by Arhibald MacKechnie who was one of Ballantine’s brewmasters. Here is what Y-7408 looked like in use at Ballantine:
With the information that Eric has added to this thread about Narragansett acquiring the Hanley Brewing Company’s brands, James Hanley may be the original U.S. source for BRY-96. The James Hanley Brewing Company owned Rhode Island’s largest ale brewery, as can be seen on the beer tray at this URL: http://trayman.net/TrayDetail/Animals/hanleys%20Red.htm
OK, so very much tying in with what my Lallemand contact stated. BRY-96 was deposited by Narragansett in 1967. Lallemand released BRY-96 as…BRY-97…according to this person. Which is odd.
Given that Hanley built several other breweries in the pre-prohibition era going back to the late 1800’s, it is very possible that the yeast strain that became synonymous with one of the most prominent California breweries in the late 20th century can be traced back through late 19th-century Rhode Island, taking it from one corner of the country to the other. Sort of like Ancestry.com for yeast strains
Also, this really makes me want to try to hunt down Hanley’s Extra Pale Ale recipe.
Okay, I stand corrected and down the rabbit hole we go. While most of the Narragansett advertising that one finds on the web is focused on their lager product, searching for breweriana revealed that Narragansett historically brewed what they labeled “Half Stock Banquet Ale.” While I am probably most likely wrong, it appears that the lager product received more focus after the acquisition of the James Hanley Brewing Company. I do not know why that is so, but Rudolph Haffenreffer passed away in 1954, leaving his sons in charge of Narragansett, so that may have had something to do with the company’s shift in focus. I still believe that there is a chance that Narragansett’s ale culture may have originated with Hanley because Hanley predated their opening. It was not uncommon for breweries to share yeast cultures.
What I want to know is what prompted Narragansett to bank the culture with Siebel? Falstaff owned Narragansett in 1967. Did Falstaff’s or Narragansett’s management team decide to get out of ale production? If Narragansett banked the culture with Siebel, then they may have also banked it with Wallerstein Labs, which had its own culture collection (there are several Wallerstain cultures in the ARS NRRL). J.E. Siebel and Max Wallerstein where contemporaries. They were both brewing scientists. Something that a lot of people do not know is that the Anchor Steam culture is not a historical steam beer culture. Anchor acquired it from Wallerstein Labs in the mid-seventies. That was when Fritz Maytag was overhauling Anchor to improve quality. There is some evidence that the Anchor culture descends from the Christian Schmidt lager culture, which Siebel holds as BRY-118. It is available from Wyeast as 2272-PC North American Lager.
