Stealing Chimay

Ok, I have searched and read all the information on how to harvest Chimay yeast from the bottle. But...I have a few more questions and concerns? The first is a concern, most of the posts saying Chimay uses it primary fermenting yeast at bottling, were from several years ago. The most recent post I found was in 2005... So has chimay changed their tune? OR is the yeast still safe to use? An employee at my local homebrew told me yesterday he thought they bottled with champagne yeast, while another employee disagreed...

My second question is... What type of Chimay bottles are being used? You can buy either the small capped bottles, or the larger champagne corked bottles? Do both work? I suspect maybe the my local brewstore employee who argued for champagne yeast conditioning may have been refering to the corked bottles, and the capped are the ones you can culture from?

Good questions.

I can not answer you but many manufactures do use a different strain of yeast in the bottle.

Stop worrying about it and buy yourself a vial of WLP500.

This is an invaluable resource.

It is my understanding that they use a different yeast for bottling and it would not surprise me to find that it is champagne yeast. I'd just use White Labs' WLP500 Trappist Ale or Wyeast's 1214 Belgian Ale yeasts. They are both from Chimay.

The only bottles I ever see are the big, corked ones. They have yeast sediment at the bottom.

I beleive I read that Chimay keeps their bottles conditioing for 18 months before it's ready for sale...

I read that Chimay is only bottled by virgins.

Virgin Monks