I could be wrong, but hear me out anyway… from everything I’ve read prior, New Belgium uses WLP001 for their non Belgian beers. I just had some Imperial Voodoo Ranger and I must say that is not WLP001 or any Chico variant for that matter. Again I could be wrong. I have just recently had three different Sierra Nevada beers, which either makes me the best or worst judge of this matter. New Belgium has to be using an English yeast. Some sort of ESB or “London” ale strain. Can anyone confirm or deny this by chance?
New Belgium Yeast
- Thread starter Pehlman17
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monkeymath
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I've never had any New Belgium beers, so I'm afraid I won't be of much help here. I'm just surprised that you could make such an assertion about the yeast in a 9% Imperial IPA loaded with hops - how on earth can you tell what's hops and what's esters?
Northern_Brewer
British - apparently some US company stole my name
It's quite possible for NB to be using a Chico for most of their beers, but not all of them. And there's certainly been a bit of a trend lately of breweries switching some beers to 1318 to keep up with the fashion.
Or they just might have had a problem with one batch, their usual yeast was contaminated or died, and they had to call in a favour and get some yeast in from somewhere - anywhere - they could. It happens.
Or they had problems with the ferment which meant their normal yeast just misbehaved a bit. Again, it happens, particularly in stressful, high-ABV fermentations.
But yep, they use WLP001 either directly or propagated in-house. Years ago Wyeast released a one-off (VSS as it was in those days) called 1792 Fat Tire Ale and which sequencing has revealed to be the nearest known relative to WLP001. So that all checks out.
What happened for this particular batch of this particular beer? I've no idea.
