[Saccharomyces]

I woke up in the middle of the night and could not go back to sleep, so I started to search for information on Y-7408 (available commercially as ECY-10). I was the person who postulated that Y-7408 was Anchor's culture and Y-7407 (available commercially as ECY-12) was BRY-96 (the parent of Chico for the few people on the planet that do not know).  For those who are not in the know, Y-7408 is Ballantine's ale strain and Y-7407 was used by Ballantine in their "beer" brewery on Freeman Street. Well, genetic sequencing in the Dunham Lab at the University of Washington revealed that the culture deposited by Narraganset, known BRY-96, was not originally from Ballantine. We have discussed BRY-96 either being Narragansett's ale culture or one the company acquired from the James Hanley Ale Brewery.  That fact is now irrefutable.


I now have a few uses of Y-7408 under my belt.  All of my observations point to it being related to the WLP002/WLP007 family.  However, what I found interesting upon closer examination of the phylogeny of American brewing strains from the Dunham Lab paper is that Y-7408 groups with BE065 from the Gallone study.  According to the Suregork site, BE065 is most likely WLP019 California Ale IV.  We know that WLP051 California Ale V is actually Saccharomyces pastorianus, which pretty makes the assertion that it is Anchor's ale strain null and void.  A confirmable source for Anchor's strain is UCD 915.  UCD 915 was used in study of Lachancea thermotolerans as an alternative brewing strain in which Charlie Bamforth appears as one the authors, so it is legit (in the table on page 600 of this publication: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jib.362).  If Anchor's yeast is not from BRY-96, then it is most likely WLP019 California Ale IV making it Y-7408 as I originally postulated.  I now believe that WLP051 California Ale V may have come from Mendocino.  Yeast I cultured from their bottle-conditioned products back in the 90s had a distinct sulfur aroma.  One thing that is no longer in question is that WLP019 is more than likely BE065 and BE065 is more than likely Y-7408.

From https://www.biorxiv.org/sites/all/libraries/pdfjs/web/viewer.html?file=/content/biorxiv/early/2020/06/29/2020.06.26.166157.full.pdf

[BrewBama]

Mark, looking at that chart, are we to understand the 2018 and 2019 US-05 strains were different?  If strains change year to year, that could explain differences of opinion for that strain (and others).



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[Saccharomyces]

BRY-96 in all of its forms is prone to mutation. That is one the things they were studying at the University of Washington.  If I recall correctly, they were seeing significant mutation by the 7th pitch.  Let's think about how many cell generations it takes to grow a single cell into tens of thousand of pounds of yeast and we have what occurs in the manufacture of dry yeast.  In typical brewing use, the average culture replicates around 4 times or 4 cell generations, which translates to around 28 cell generations after the 7th pitch from the original culture.  We do not know how many cell generations the original culture represents, but it is easy to see that the number of cell generations in industrial production of US-05 at Fermentis dwarfs what is happening at Post Doc brewing.  That is why we have people claiming that there are variants in US-05.  A variant is a mutated form of the original, so yes, it is possible to find variation from batch to batch of dry yeast depending on the culture being propagated.  The important thing to take from the phylogeny is that both US-05 cultures grouped together.  We do not know if or how much they differ.   

Another finding from that graph is that, regardless of what is claimed, Bell's yeast strain is derived from BRY-96; otherwise, it would not group with all of the other BRY-96 descendants.  If it descended from another strain, it would appear as an outlier like Y-7408.  The reality is that there were not many ale yeast strains available to brewers when the first generation of microbreweries opened. Only breweries who sourced their yeast culture directly from Great Britain or Europe have cultures that differ from this group.

With that said, while Y-7408 is a lot like WLP002/WLP007 in use, it is also different.  It has one of the largest rocky heads I have ever seen on a yeast strain. It kind of reminds me of old photos of the yeast used in Burton unions.  What we know about Ballantine is that the company was sold after the repel of Prohibition because they had lost the expertise needed to brew beer. The new owners brought in a Scottish brewmaster named Archibald MacKechnie who in turn allegedly brought in a Burton brewer who formulated Ballantine IPA and Ballantine Burton Ale.  The Burton Ale was an old-style Burton beer that was actually a long-aged Barley wine only available to employees and other important people as Christmas gifts.  Y-7408 is most likely of Burton origin.  It is far more attenuative than either WLP002 or WLP007.  Both of the beers that I brewed with it so far experienced over 80% AA.  It took the first beer from 1.070 down to 1.012 and the second beer down from 1.066 to 1.010.  I am not sold on the yeast culture.  There are definitely easier to use cultures that produce as good, if not better beers.  However, I may experiment with open fermentation and Burton-union style yeast collection with beer return system before I move on to a different culture.  What I can say at this point is that Y-7408 is very different than BRY-96.

[dmtaylor]

Mark, it's cool to see independent verification.  Here's a summation of what I'd gathered over the past few years, if you hadn't seen it before.  In the end I believe we reached the same general conclusion (well, so far anyway... this will always remain a living document).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16XRUloO3WXqH9Ixsf5vx2DIKDmrEQJ36tLRBmmya7Jo/edit?usp=sharing

Mark, looking at that chart, are we to understand the 2018 and 2019 US-05 strains were different?  If strains change year to year, that could explain differences of opinion for that strain (and others).

Indeed, I think the data here serves to demonstrate just how quickly a strain can mutate, and it basically shows how two sisters who are ALMOST identical twins will show up on a graphic like this one (one little black line slightly longer than the other).  Also this result makes me wonder whether even the same identical yeast propagated and pitched into two fermenters might still result in two slightly different beers.  There are just so many replications involved so quickly, that a little bit of mutation is inevitable at some random point.  How soon mutation happens on the average, whether in just one cycle, or seven, or something in between, would be interesting to try to nail down.  And I'm sure results will differ broadly, based on the hundreds (thousands?) of variables involved, such that we can only attempt to develop an average rule of thumb for number of pitches before fresh yeast may be desirable, and should probably keep any such rule of thumb specific to each particular yeast source.  Do mutations begin to have noticeable impact after two cycles, seven cycles?  Who the heck really knows.  WAY too many variables involved to be able to pin this down easily.

Great discussion topic, I love this stuff, even if I don't speak all "the lingo".  I'm no geneticist or microbiologist, but I do love learning about stuff like this.  Cheers all.

MULTIPLE EDITS: And while the BRY-96 story is coming together now... I'm still confused as heck on where to place BRY-97.  Part of the confusion is I think we have multiple versions of "BRY-97" floating around out there.  At some point I'd like to get the two or three or four versions of "BRY-97" all lined up so we can debunk the ones that really aren't the "real" BRY-97.  I'm still thinking that one of the versions of BRY-97 (perhaps the dried one?) is just a glorified bread yeast, only God knows the real source.  I don't know whether Gallone BE068 is any of them.  BE068 *could* be WLP051.  But I could be wrong.  Also, my notes indicate the possibility that perhaps WLP051 might be related to WLP940 Mexican lager.  I'd have to dig through my notes to recall how I came up with that one.  If true, it could bridge a gap of how WLP051 came to be, perhaps from someone running a lager across the border from Mexico.  Or not.  We'll probably never really know.

Cheers again.

[hopfenundmalz]

BRY-96 in all of its forms is prone to mutation. That is one the things they were studying at the University of Washington.  If I recall correctly, they were seeing significant mutation by the 7th pitch.  Let's think about how many cell generations it takes to grow a single cell into tens of thousand of pounds of yeast and we have what occurs in the manufacture of dry yeast.  In typical brewing use, the average culture replicates around 4 times or 4 cell generations, which translates to around 28 cell generations after the 7th pitch from the original culture.  We do not know how many cell generations the original culture represents, but it is easy to see that the number of cell generations in industrial production of US-05 at Fermentis dwarfs what is happening at Post Doc brewing.  That is why we have people claiming that there are variants in US-05.  A variant is a mutated form of the original, so yes, it is possible to find variation from batch to batch of dry yeast depending on the culture being propagated.  The important thing to take from the phylogeny is that both US-05 cultures grouped together.  We do not know if or how much they differ.   

Another finding from that graph is that, regardless of what is claimed, Bell's yeast strain is derived from BRY-96; otherwise, it would not group with all of the other BRY-96 descendants.  If it descended from another strain, it would appear as an outlier like Y-7408.  The reality is that there were not many ale yeast strains available to brewers when the first generation of microbreweries opened. Only breweries who sourced their yeast culture directly from Great Britain or Europe have cultures that differ from this group.

With that said, while Y-7408 is a lot like WLP002/WLP007 in use, it is also different.  It has one of the largest rocky heads I have ever seen on a yeast strain. It kind of reminds me of old photos of the yeast used in Burton unions.  What we know about Ballantine is that the company was sold after the repel of Prohibition because they had lost the expertise needed to brew beer. The new owners brought in a Scottish brewmaster named Archibald MacKechnie who in turn allegedly brought in a Burton brewer who formulated Ballantine IPA and Ballantine Burton Ale.  The Burton Ale was an old-style Burton beer that was actually a long-aged Barley wine that was only available to employees and other important people as Christmas gifts.  Y-7408 is most likely of Burton origin.  It is far more attenuative than either WLP002 or WLP007.  Both of the beers that I brewed with it so far experienced over 80% AA.  It took the first beer from 1.070 down to 1.012 and the second beer down from 1.066 to 1.010.  I am not sold on the yeast culture.  There are definitely easier to use cultures that produce as good, if not better beers.  However, I may experiment with open fermentation and Burton-union style yeast collection with beer return system before I move on to a different culture.  What I can say at this point is that Y-7408 is very different than BRY-96.

Bell's? Some time ago Larry Bell said that when he started out there were only a few yeasts available, and you could figure it out. Sure, it was BRY 96. It has adapted to Bell's brewery. It doesn't get much over 10.5% ABV when it poops out. It throws some orangey esters. I use it from time to time for certain beers.

[dmtaylor]

Bell's? Some time ago Larry Bell said that when he started out there were only a few yeasts available, and you could figure it out. Sure, it was BRY 96. It has adapted to Bell's brewery. It doesn't get much over 10.5% ABV when it poops out. It throws some orangey esters. I use it from time to time for certain beers.

Bell's yeast is really interesting stuff, very unique.  Nothing else like it.  It's been deviated from BRY-96 for so long that there's very little resemblance.

[Saccharomyces]

MULTIPLE EDITS: And while the BRY-96 story is coming together now... I'm still confused as heck on where to place BRY-97.  Part of the confusion is I think we have multiple versions of "BRY-97" floating around out there.  At some point I'd like to get the two or three or four versions of "BRY-97" all lined up so we can debunk the ones that really aren't the "real" BRY-97.  I'm still thinking that one of the versions of BRY-97 (perhaps the dried one?) is just a glorified bread yeast, only God knows the real source.

Tobias Fischborn at Lallemand let the cat out of the bag for BRY-97.  It is from a brewery that started with BRY-96.   The original sequencing of BRY-96 is believed to be that of a contaminant.  Tobias provided the Dunham Lab with a slant of the seed culture for BRY-97.  It is almost a perfect genetic match with Wyeast 1056, which we know is Sierra Nevada; therefore, the brewery that started with BRY-96 must be Sierra Nevada.  Lallemand chose this culture for propagation because it is more flocculant than BRY-96.  BRY-97 is not true Siebel accession number.   It was coined by Lallemand for the BRY-96 isolate.

[Saccharomyces]

If  WLP019 is Anchor's culture, where did Anchor acquire it in 1975?  We know that they acquired the lager culture used for Anchor Steam from Wallerstein Labs.  We also know from genetic sequencing that the Steam culture descends from the Christian Schmidt culture.  Y-7408 and Y-7407 were deposited in the NRRL by G.W. Lange in 1972. The cultures could have also been deposited in the Wallerstein Labs culture collection.  Contrary to what is claimed by Anchor, they were not the first American brewery to brew an IPA post-Prohibition.  That honor goes to Ballantine.  Was Liberty Ale modeled after Ballantine IPA?  That is kind of a reach, but it is not a far reach that they may have chosen the Ballantine culture.   Does anyone know the original and final gravity of Liberty Ale?

[dmtaylor]

MULTIPLE EDITS: And while the BRY-96 story is coming together now... I'm still confused as heck on where to place BRY-97.  Part of the confusion is I think we have multiple versions of "BRY-97" floating around out there.  At some point I'd like to get the two or three or four versions of "BRY-97" all lined up so we can debunk the ones that really aren't the "real" BRY-97.  I'm still thinking that one of the versions of BRY-97 (perhaps the dried one?) is just a glorified bread yeast, only God knows the real source.

Tobias Fischborn at Lallemand let the cat out of the bag for BRY-97.  It is from a brewery that started with BRY-96.   The original sequencing of BRY-96 is believed to be that of a contaminant.  Tobias provided the Dunham Lab with a slant of the seed culture for BRY-97.  It is almost a perfect genetic match with Wyeast 1056, which we know is Sierra Nevada; therefore, the brewery that started with BRY-96 must be Sierra Nevada.  Lallemand chose this culture for propagation because it is more flocculant than BRY-96.  BRY-97 is not true Siebel accession number.   It was coined by Lallemand for the BRY-96 isolate.

May I ask, which line item on the chart above was the BRY-97 that was provided by Tobias?  It is not listed by Dunham in an obvious manner in the chart.  I do hear repeatedly that the original sequencing of BRY-97 must have been a contaminant.  If this is known beyond a doubt through Dunham or elsewhere, I'd love to be handed the key.

If  WLP019 is Anchor's culture, where did Anchor acquire it in 1975?  We know that they acquired the lager culture used for Anchor Steam from Wallerstein Labs.  We also know from genetic sequencing that the Steam culture descends from the Christian Schmidt culture.  Y-7408 and Y-7407 were deposited in the NRRL by G.W. Lange in 1972. The cultures could have also been deposited in the Wallerstein Labs culture collection.  Contrary to what is claimed by Anchor, they were not the first American brewery to brew an IPA post-Prohibition.  That honor goes to Ballantine.  Was Liberty Ale modeled after Ballantine IPA?  That is kind of a reach, but it is not a far reach that they may have chosen the Ballantine culture.   Does anyone know the original and final gravity of Liberty Ale?

In those early days of American craft brewing, they were all sharing yeast pretty openly.  I know New Albion was involved as well at the time.  There are stories out there from the horse's mouths how where & when they got their yeast; we'd just have to find those and give them another listen (literally, I know I've heard these in podcasts, probably on MBAA or perhaps others).  My guess (without confirmation yet) is that Anchor might have gotten their yeast from Ballantine.

My notes (which would have been from a magazine article in 2006-2007) show Liberty Ale with OG 1.058 and FG 1.015, which would be about 75% attenuation.  And it's dry hopped, so based on hop creep / enzymes from the hops, the attenuation of Liberty might be slightly higher than the original yeast could do on its own, so the average apparent attenuation of the original yeast might have been more like 73% or something like that.  Which would be consistent with Wyeast 1272 (which is probably the same as WLP019, or they are sisters or close cousins, both from Anchor).

[Saccharomyces]

May I ask, which line item on the chart above was the BRY-97 that was provided by Tobias?  It is not listed by Dunham in an obvious manner in the chart.  I do hear repeatedly that the original sequencing of BRY-97 must have been a contaminant.  If this is known beyond a doubt through Dunham or elsewhere, I'd love to be handed the key.

Chris Large shared that information in a reply that he sent when inquired about the Dunham Lab study.  Here is my first post about his reply: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=35487.msg445954#msg445954

In those early days of American craft brewing, they were all sharing yeast pretty openly.  I know New Albion was involved as well at the time.  There are stories out there from the horse's mouths how where & when they got their yeast; we'd just have to find those and give them another listen (literally, I know I've heard these in podcasts, probably on MBAA or perhaps others).  My guess (without confirmation yet) is that Anchor might have gotten their yeast from Ballantine.

My notes (which would have been from a magazine article in 2006-2007) show Liberty Ale with OG 1.058 and FG 1.015, which would be about 75% attenuation.  And it's dry hopped, so based on hop creep / enzymes from the hops, the attenuation of Liberty might be slightly higher than the original yeast could do on its own, so the average apparent attenuation of the original yeast might have been more like 73% or something like that.  Which would be consistent with Wyeast 1272 (which is probably the same as WLP019, or they are sisters or close cousins, both from Anchor).

Those numbers do not compute.  Anchor Liberty Ale is 5.9% ABV, which is a gravity drop of 0.045. Y-7408 is capable of much higher AA than 75%.  The first two beers into which I pitched the culture achieved over 80% AA with a 152F 90-minute rest.  What we know is that BE065 groups with Y-7408.  From my experience with Y-7408, 75% AA for WLP019 is very conservative, that is, if WLP019 is BE065.  Also, from my experience with Y-7408, the culture is a very strong fermenter.  I used a 3/8" blow-off tube with a 4-gallon FermTank and it sounded like the yeast was kicking the blow-off jug.  The blow-off could easily be heard from from outside of the 5 cu.ft. chest freezer that I am using as a fermentation chamber.  Y-7408 took a 1.066 wort down to 1.010 in three days at 64F on the second pitch.  I had to take a gravity reading because I thought that the fermentation had stalled.

[dmtaylor]

My notes (which would have been from a magazine article in 2006-2007) show Liberty Ale with OG 1.058 and FG 1.015, which would be about 75% attenuation.  And it's dry hopped, so based on hop creep / enzymes from the hops, the attenuation of Liberty might be slightly higher than the original yeast could do on its own, so the average apparent attenuation of the original yeast might have been more like 73% or something like that.  Which would be consistent with Wyeast 1272 (which is probably the same as WLP019, or they are sisters or close cousins, both from Anchor).

Those numbers do not compute.  Anchor Liberty Ale is 5.9% ABV, which a gravity drop of 0.045. Y-7408 is capable of much higher AA than 75%.  The first two beers into which I pitched the culture achieved over 80% AA with a 152F 90-minute rest.  What we know is that BE065 groups with Y-7408.  From my experience with Y-7408, 75% AA for WLP019 is very conservative, that is, if WLP019 is BE065.  Also, from my experience with Y-7408, the culture is a very strong fermenter.  I used a 3/8" blow-off tube with a 4-gallon FermTank and it sounded like the yeast was kicking the blow-off jug.  The blow-off could easily be heard from from outside of the 5 cu.ft. chest freezer that I am using as a fermentation chamber.  Y-7408 took a 1.066 wort down to 1.010 in three days at 64F on the second pitch.  I had to take a gravity reading because I thought that the fermentation had stalled.

I wouldn't expect Y-7408 and WLP019/1272 to behave exactly the same.  If they were sisters, the horizontal black lines on the Dunham chart would be really short.  But we see the opposite, the lines are very long indeed.  This indicates to me that they are more like 5th cousins, or a similarly distant relationship, but still unique in that none of the other strains tested are part of the same branch of the family.  They are more closely related to one another than to any other strains... but still distant from one another.

I'm not sure what all this adds to the discussion, but... if the 5.9% ABV of Liberty Ale has been that way for decades (I'm not sure), then it still wouldn't be a stretch if the recipe I found from about 15 years ago was a little off, and the actual OG were 1.059, and FG 1.014.  That would bring us to the reported value of 5.9% ABV.  So that's about 76% apparent attenuation, which indeed is not the 80-85% of Y-7408.  But like I said... I wouldn't assume these strains should attenuate exactly the same anyway.  They may share a common ancestor.... but that common ancestor was from a long time ago (assuming, say, 50+ years constitutes "a long time").

Anyone interested might want to toy around with 1272 and WLP019 to see what happens with those.  I don't know if WLP019 is released very often, I've never seen it in the shop.  1272 should be available somewheres.  My bet is about... 76% attenuation.  But might still get that fast high krausen thing.  I don't know, I haven't used any of these.

[erockrph]

Just added WLP019 to my Vault preorders...

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[Saccharomyces]

I am planning to repitch Y-7408 into a 5-gallon batch of blonde/golden ale using my 7-gallon BrewBucket.  The foam head reached the top of the dome on my 4-gallon FermTank with a 3-gallon batch, which is more like 5 gallons to top of the fermenter and little more than 5 gallons to the top of the dome.  I had a small skin of yeast under the rocky head on the second pitch, but I would not call this yeast a true top-cropper, at least not compared to NCYC 1333, which produces a pancake-like yeast head.  It has already fermented two batches that were over 7% ABV, so we will see.

[YeastHead]

There may be another interesting overlooked yeast fact regarding the origin of Bry-97.

In the Suregork 2018 "brewing yeast family tree, which can be found here: https://beer.suregork.com/?p=4030 Bry-97 groups with CBS1487. I don't think this is a coincidence or the result of mislabeling. For what it is worth, I found a possible link between CBS1487 and Ballantine.

CBS1487 was deposited in August 1933 bij Carl Neuberg. It was used as a "brewers bottom yeast" at the Patzenhofer brewery in Berlin, Germany. The CBS1487 record can be found here: https://wi.knaw.nl/fungal_table Who was Carl Neuberg? He was a renowned jewish biochemist who worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. More information can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Neuberg . In his research on fermentation processes, enzymes etc. Neuberg made use of the Patzenhofer yeast. Neuberg was forced by the Nazis to end his work and in 1940 he fled to he US.

After his death, his correspondence, lab notes etc. were donated by one of his daughters to the American Philosophical Society. An inventory can be found here: https://search.amphilsoc.org/collections/view?docId=ead/Mss.Ms.Coll.4-ead.xml From the inventory it follows that there is some 1942 correspondence between Neuberg and  "P. Ballantine & Sons". Of course, I don't know what was the subject of that correspondence: maybe he just tried to find a job, but it's also possible the subject had something to do with yeast.

To cut a long story short: If Bry-96 originates from Ballantine and Bry-97 is a contaminant isolated from Bry-96, than probably Bry-96 was the Ballantine ale yeast and Bry-97 was the Ballantine (Patzenhofer) lager yeast. Does this make sense?

[BrewBama]

This makes sense if Bry-97 is a lager yeast.


History doesn't lie. People simply lie about history.