Chimay Yeast

I thought I read somewhere that I could keep the yeast from a bottle of Chimay and grow it or something?

Does anybody know what I am talking about?

Yep, it's called yeast harvesting. You use the yeast remaining in the bottle to make a stepped-starter for a batch of your own beer.

From a limited google search, it looks like Chimay doesn't use a secondary yeast to bottle condition their beers, so one could technically harvest their yeast from the bottle.

Or, you could just buy some Wyeast 1214 Belgian Ale Yeast cuz it was originally propagated from the Chimay brewery 20 years ago.

Or White Labs WLP500 is also supposed to be the Chimay strain.

Could all be in my head, but the Chimay I carried back from Belgium and harvested tastes way better than WLP500. Never tried Wyeasts version...

Well...read a book (must have been Brew Like a Monk) where the author discussed that those yeast may indeed be from the Chimay strain, however the yeast that Chimay is using may have changed/evolved since then. Plus there are sooooo many other factors involved.

I'm planning to brew a chimay red clone in the immediate future and picked up WLP500.

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to pick up a bottle of chimay, drink it, and put the dregs into the starter along with the vial of yeast.