Has Anyone Ordered Yeast from the National Collection of Yeast Cultures?

Stumbled across this site (here)and I was just wondering if anyone has experience with them.

It looks like they provide yeast services for researchers but they sell to home brewers. The samples are pricey (46-86 British Pounds) for a slant. There's also not much information on each strain as it pertains to brewing since it's mostly a research company. I wonder if there's some really nice brewing strains that aren't available elsewhere. Would be fun to order a random strain and see what happens.

Cheers

Very cool! If you click on the Cultures tab, then the Brewing Cultures link it gives you a table with strain numbers and attenuation & floculation characteristics. But if you then click on the strain number you get a little more information, like the name of the brewery or brewer who banked it with them. There are a lot of brewery strains from the 1950s that would be fun to try out.

I could definitely waste a bunch of time reading through that! It'd probably be a little expensive for a single person, but if you got a club or group of people together and pitched in for one, then brewed a bunch of different beers with it, you could get some interesting results!

More to see:
American Type Culture Collection http://www.atcc.org/
Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures (Netherlands) http://www.cbs.knaw.nl/
National Collection of Yeast Cultures (UK) http://www.ncyc.co.uk/
http://www.siebelinstitute.com/services/yeast.html
http://www.phaffcollection.org/

Also, about the prices, unless you're an academic, slants start at 82 Pounds Sterling. Of course, most grad students would probably order some beer yeast in exchange for a six pack and the cost of the yeast, since that's the most "no harm, no foul" transaction under the sun.