Chimay Yeast or Wyeast?

[mrmitch]

So I poured the dregs of a Chimay red bottle into a starter, and it's going to town and all, but I was reading Jamil's book on yeast and he had a paragraph explaining that Chimay centrifuges the fermentation yeast out of their beer. So since this beer is bottle conditioned with a different strain do you think I'd be better off getting a Strong Belgian Wyeast strain instead of trying to ferment to around 8% with a mystery yeast, or has anyone had success with these dregs?

 

[beerand420]

There's a lot of conflicting information out there regarding the strains used for bottling vs. fermenting. I think the jury is still out on that one. I'd probably do a test batch with your harvested yeast and see how it goes. The first page of this thread seems to indicate that it works fine.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/chimay-yeast-3895/#post33396

Also some decent info in this one regarding off the shelf strains, one of which apparently came from Chimay.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/harvesting-chimay-red-yeast-118510/

Sounds like a fun experiment, I'm going to have to try it myself.

 

[wedge421]

I would go with the Wyeast. Unless you know exactly how old the bottle is as well the yeast they condition with might not be strong enough to get going. But hey its worth a shot.

 

[permo]

I have had great luck with bottle harvested Chimay, it sure tastes like the real thing to me. It makes great belgian ale and is a beast in the fermenter.

I bottle harvested, raised up a good looking starter and brewed a 1.040 OG blonde ale with only about 15IBU to raise a nice big crop of yeast to wash. 1.5 years later I am still using this yeast.