Sierra Nevada Ovila yeast

[njbabs]

I'm thinking of making a Saison, and always make things more difficult then they need to be. So I'm planing to culture up some examples of yeast from bottle conditioned saisons.

So the question: Anyone have any idea what yeast Sierra Nevada might use in their Ovila Saison? The literature about these indicates 'abby yeast' in general, which leads me to assume they use the same yeast for the saison, dubbel and tripple, and that they are abby/trappist style yeast not saison.

 

[njbabs]

To answer my own question, as someone at SN got back to me incredibly quickly. Here's a quote from them, for anyone else who's curious:

Ovila Saison IS bottle conditioned using the yeast from primary fermentation.
As for the yeast strain...that's a bit of a long story. We have about 25 commercial saison yeasts in storage here in Chico. We tried pilot batches with almost all of them and for some reason, none of the strains really scratched the itch of what we were looking for.
A friend of our R and D brewmaster (Scott Jennings) offered us a yeast strain that he had been using for years in both home brew and commercial beers. He said it originally came from a traditional saison brewery in Belgium, but he refused to tell us the name. He's had the same yeast in rotation for nearly 10 years so it may have mutated quite a bit by this point as well.

To make a long story short, no I can't tell you what the closest commercial strain would be because frankly, we don't know!

Try culturing some up from the bottle and that is about as close as you can get. (BTW ferment hot...75-80 degrees to get the best flavors!)

I've already cultured some from a bottle, w/ great success. Just need to brew with it now.

 

[jessup]

thread revival-


your information is definitely helpful and i am thankful you shared your response from SN. cheers if you're still out there

 

[njbabs]

Great to hear, I still need to brew with that yeast...
Life and moving have gotten in the way.

 

[jessup]

There's no visible yeast in the starter after pitching the dregs so i'm unsure I've captured anything. I might have to cold crash & step up to see for sure. This was from a Ovila Saison & there was very little sediment on the bottom of the bottle to be had.

 

[rcsoccer]

There's no visible yeast in the starter after pitching the dregs so i'm unsure I've captured anything. I might have to cold crash & step up to see for sure. This was from a Ovila Saison & there was very little sediment on the bottom of the bottle to be had.

Sierra Nevada are VERY good at bottling their beers will little or no visible sediment. As you probably know, most of them are bottle conditioned (Pale Ale, Torpedo, Kellerweis, etc...). How many bottles of the Ovila did you use? When I cultured some from bottles of Torpedo, I used the dregs fro a whole 6-pack to make sure that I had enough. It will take at least a week of stepping up the starters to see visible activity. If you have access to a stir plate, I would suggest using one. If you use one, keep it on a lower speed. Don't create a whirlpool vortex. Just my $0.02.

Try throwing the dregs from a couple more bottles in the starter you have. Should work just fine.

Good luck!

 

[jessup]

Good to know. I used only 1 750 mL bottle so gonna need more...