Bottle Conditioned Beer List

[bobukbrewer]

Victor - not silly but a great idea - and put 10% of the malt from the kit into a saucepan - add a few pints of water and boil with some hops for 15 minutes - then strain - then make up the kit as per instructions.....

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I've never done this before ... I have some bottles of continental Lancelot bottle-conditioned 'biere sur lie' - half a dozen different types - how would I go about keeping and then using the yeast?

See that Bells link in my previous post.

Can I combine the yeasts from different bottles?

Yep - but best to keep yeast from the same beer together, in case they're using different strains in different beers - being French a lot of the Lancelot yeast will probably be Belgian-y.

could I switch a salvaged yeast instead of the kit yeast in, say a Make Your Own kit or would that be silly (or worse)?

Not silly at all, as long as you loosely try to match yeast to beer - whilst a lager yeast will make beer with a saison kit, it may be a bit dull compared to the yeast that comes with the kit.

Since yeast from bottles can be a bit unpredictable, it may be good to practice eg making starters with commercial liquid yeast, or practice with a bottle that's easy to get hold of (like Fuller's 1845), before trying with something more exotic that may be harder to replace if you make a mistake through inexperience.

 

[Victor Churchill]

Thanks for the replies - the kits I have to hand are an IPA and a bitter from The Range's Make Your Own range (the one they've just started replacing) and the beers I have are indeed a bit Belgian-y or French lager-ish (one's definitely a triple) , so it might not be a marriage made in heaven. Probably better to pick up something pale that I can boot with a bit of extra LME I suspect, but of course I then wouldn't have a reference to compare to (ah ha ... unless I split the batch , but that would be tricky in terms of logistics and temperature control - dang, this brewing business can get complicated...)

 

[dad_of_jon]

huyge's delerium tremems , nocturnum and la guillotine are all triple fermented.

 

[MyQul]

huyge's delerium tremems , nocturnum and la guillotine are all triple fermented.

Do you know what triple fermented means, dad?

 

[MyQul]

Just for clarity - the Adnams mini-casks (Bitter, Broadside, some specials) contain live yeast, but the mini-kegs (Ghost Ship etc) do not - explained here : https://www.adnams.co.uk/articles/mini-casks-and-mini-kegs-whats-the-difference.htm

Fullers Vintage are also bottle-conditioned, but people have struggled to get yeast out of them - high ABV is not ideal

Harvey's Imperial Stout contains Debaryomyces hansenii alongside the main Harveys production yeast (http://www.beerhunter.com/documents/19133-001504.html) - the main yeast came from John Smiths on the 21:56 train on 14 October 1957 : https://www.harveys.org.uk/news/60th-anniversary-harveys-yeast
DNA sequencing of one of their strains shows it's a relative of the saison yeasts, which presumably accounts for the slight phenolic character of Harveys.
The Marble yeast originated at Gales according to James Kemp : https://protzonbeer.co.uk/features/2017/12/27/fuller-s-marble-revive-classic-old-ale and I've heard of people recovering yeast from Dobber in the past.
Hen's Tooth appears to have been discontinued.
It's Nøgne Ø - Tesco had their saison for a while not any more.
WLP540, allegedly from Rochefort, is a non-phenolic English strain so the Rochefort house yeast may be of interest for making English styles?

AIUI most (but not all) Sierra Nevada beers (at least bottles?) are bottle-conditioned, and I'm sure I've seen an interview that confirmed the Pale Ale uses the house strain for bottling.

Bell's tell you how to harvest their yeast! https://www.bellsbeer.com/news/how-culture-bell-s-house-yeast-bottle-bell-s-beer

I asked the Sharps head brewer about their yeast origins and he was rather vague about it, but did mention they did come close to changing it a few years ago - it felt like they weren't too tied to it anyway.

There's some inspiration in the list of winners of CAMRA's bottle award, which I think is restricted to bottle-conditioned beers : https://www.camra.org.uk/beer/awards/champion-bottled-beer-of-britain/

The Hanlons yeast is interesting (and CAMRA have given awards to Hanlon Stout) - at least if it's the same as Brewlab Devon1 then it's very banana-y.

Young's Bitter is also bottle-conditioned - is Marston conditioning all the Young's stuff now?
https://groceries.asda.com/product/bitter/youngs-bottle-conditioned-bitter/910000351280

Some interesting stuff their NB

Perhaps Adnams have changed their mini kegs over the past couple of years but I remember 2-3 years ago a forumite (cant remember who) harvested the yeast from a MK of ghost ship and brewed with it. There was definatley live yeast in there. Whether it was the original strain or not I couldn't say.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I have a vague memory of an issue with Adnams mini-kegs ending up with yeast in them for a period, when they weren't meant to. Obviously it's possible they don't clean out all the yeast, but I guess you have to go with the official position than the mini-casks have yeast and the mini-kegs don't.

 

[MyQul]

I have a vague memory of an issue with Adnams mini-kegs ending up with yeast in them for a period, when they weren't meant to. Obviously it's possible they don't clean out all the yeast, but I guess you have to go with the official position than the mini-casks have yeast and the mini-kegs don't.

I agree you have to go with the official position. I went to the page you linked. I looked at that page a number of years ago and dont remember the stuff about a difference between (mini) casks and kegs. Perhaps I just forgot about it, but could it be that between then and now they've changed the Ghost ship from casks to kegs? So back when whoever it was harvested the yeast from Ghost ship, all mini kegs were in fact casks (with yeast rather then filtered and without)

 

[user 18729]

Does anyone know if this will have the proprietary strain of Hoegaarden yeast? I really fancy making a blond or Belgian ipa with their yeast after trying this one

 

[johncrobinson]

Yeast farming is not easy but is good fun for those with the eqipment

As a winemaker I have found over the last 20yrs or so that the yeast DOES make a difference.
This goes against "old school"thinking.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

@Hopsteep - I think the general consensus is that Hoegaarden use a bottling yeast rather than the primary strain, but if you harvest that bottling strain it works OK.... I don't know for certain though. This is meant to be a pretty good clone with extract.

Couple more to mention - Marston's fancy Horninglow series are bottled-conditioned, presumably with their bottling yeast. #3, the DDH pale (oak-aged, fermented in the Unions as you do!) is available from Waitrose at the moment.

Fuller's Vintage 2019 is supposedly still available from Waitrose online, but I wonder if they just haven't updated it to 2020, as 2020 is apparently now available in store along with their imperial stout. Vintage is bottle-conditioned, presumably with the production strain like 1845 and Lancer, but you're better off harvesting from the lower-ABV beers if you can, the yeast will be less stressed and so less mutated. Ocado's switch from Waitrose to M&S means they no longer have the specialist Fuller's stuff like Vintage.

Tesco have some more Goose Island Matilda and Sofie in store at the moment at £3 a pop, which are their attempts at an Orval clone and saison respectively. In my post-Covid state I enjoyed Sofie but Matilda was a bit meh. The label says they're "packaged in the UK" but since they have weird custom 355ml bottles and are dated 2017, I assume the packaging extends only to putting new labels and boxes for bottles that haven't sold in the US, and the contents are the same. They're both bottle conditioned and regularly get used for harvesting across the pond, particularly since Matilda dregs have a Brett - there's old threads on HBT for both Matilda and Sofie.

 

[nixhaz]

Just resurrecting this, I cultured up a lovely starter from a few ml of leftover GhostShip (Adnams) in a mini keg recently. It's lovely. Ferments out very dry - about 1.004 on the 3 brews I've used it for so far. Has that 'Adnams' flavour, so I think it is probably the dual strain they use in all their ales.

 

[An Ankoù]

I've never done this before ... I have some bottles of continental Lancelot bottle-conditioned 'biere sur lie' - half a dozen different types - how would I go about keeping and then using the yeast? Can I combine the yeasts from different bottles? I've only ever made kit beers, using the no-name yeast in the kit - could I switch a salvaged yeast instead of the kit yeast in, say a Make Your Own kit or would that be silly (or worse)?
Thanks for your patience...

This is a long shot as your post was a couple of years ago. Did you try culturing the Lancelot yeast? The brewery's not too far from me and I once cultured the yeast from their Blanche Hermine and brewed a test batch. the results were not stunning, but then I'm not too fond of Blanche Hermine anyway. i hadn't realised the other beers included bottle conditioned ones. If you made a record, which ones did you try? A lot of bottled beers referment with a different yeast like Safale F2, but I don't know whether Lancelot do.

 

[An Ankoù]

Just resurrecting this, I cultured up a lovely starter from a few ml of leftover GhostShip (Adnams) in a mini keg recently. It's lovely. Ferments out very dry - about 1.004 on the 3 brews I've used it for so far. Has that 'Adnams' flavour, so I think it is probably the dual strain they use in all their ales.

Spot on @nixhaz . I've used yeast from Ghost Ship mini kegs, too. I found it relatively easy to culture and it seems to be the dual strain as you say. This is in spite of Adnams claiming that their filtered beer contains no yeast.
I'm beginning to think that all unpasteurised beers must contain at least some viable yeast.

 

[thegrantickle]

Anyone know about Wild Beer Co?

 

[marshbrewer]

This looks interesting, don't k ow if it will be Badgers primary yeast or a bottling strain.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Interesting that the bottled version is 7% - I assume it's the same as the Coronation Ale they brewed for Sainsburys, except the Sainsbury's version is not bottle-conditioned.