Is 3711/Belle Saison a Contaminant?

[xico]

@Jayjay1976 Diastaticus is simply a saccharomyces and would be found where others exist. Hops are not likely locations to find them. The flowers are wind pollinated so no bees and wasps to transport them which means no nectar production which can encourage yeast growth. Flowers that attract insect or bird pollination and subsequent fruit will often be covered. Furthermore, many hops are cut down at the end of the season so there is little material to house organisms carried over from the previous years like you would bark in a tree.

The kilning process would be inhospitable for yeast but I think if they were covered in yeast we see some getting through.


@TANSTAAFB
Not a lot has been done to determine yeast strain ibu tolerance. That said, just because they can survive in the presence of iso-alpha and beta acids from hops doesn't mean it prefers it. The mechanism that makes it hard for bacteria to grow also challenges yeast budding, which is why you won't hear of anyone hopping their starters.

The threshold needed to control one strain of Diastaticus isn't necessarily going to help with another.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I'm not sure why this is so controversial. 3711 is diastaticus. Diastaticus contamination has caused recalls and a lawsuit. There seem to be reasonable grounds to treat diastaticus as a "wild" yeast like brettanomyces rather than a "clean" yeast.

Just to be clear - you seem to view diastaticus as some kind of separate yeast species. It's not, it's just a label for regular yeast that contains one particular gene (STA1 glucoamylase) that's particularly good at breaking down complex carbohydrates. Think of it like the label "redhead" or "blue-eyed" in humans rather than a species name like "gorilla" or "chimpanzee".

There's quite a few yeasts with the gene - aside from WLP566 White Labs have found it in WLP099 Super High Gravity ("Thomas Hardy" - which is actually a wine yeast) and WLP590 French Saison. Sequence analysis suggests it may be lurking in WLP026 Premium Bitter ("Marstons"), a British relative of the saisons which doesn't carry a warning at present - Burton brewers always looked for high attenuation in order to ferment out everything before sending the beer to export markets.There also seems to be non-functional STA1 genes in WLP045 Scotch Whisky and WLP570 Belgian Golden Ale ("Duvel") which may show up on PCRs without having functional genes (045 has a warning) - all those may be interesting ones to test if you can get them xico?

The original complaint Left Hand had was that they were buying pitches of WLP090 San Diego that had sufficiently high levels of STA1-containing contaminants that they were causing bottle bombs months later on the shelves of retailers - and that White Labs were not testing for STA1 whilst guaranteeing that their yeast was contamination-free. So if one assumes that now White Labs (and Wyeast!) are paranoid about STA1 in what they sell, then your only worry about diastaticus is the small amounts that survive your sanitation procedures and grow up sufficiently to chew significant amounts of dextrins in your homebrew. This really assumes that you're leaving your homebrew for long periods of time, at warmish temperatures - but it's not really an issue for the typical pale ale which goes into a cold kegerator and is drunk within weeks. It's only really a worry with Belgians etc that you're looking to keep - but then it's not dissimilar to worrying about Brett etc infections in that kind of thing. As mentioned above, it's not a problem if you're expecting Brett-levels of attenuation, the problem is when you expect an fg of 1.013 and there's something that takes it down to 1.003. That's a problem, that's when you get bottle bombs. Getting 1.003 when you expect 1.003 is not a problem.

 

[TANSTAAFB]

Well said!

 

[TANSTAAFB]

The president of the local brew Club (also a biologist) tasted a saison in which I had tossed dregs of some good funky beers from Jester King, and said he could taste the diastaticus. Is that even possible?!

 

[xico]

@TANSTAAFB Tasting diastaticus is a funny claim to make as there is no defining flavor of the identified strains. Saccharomyces as a genus is highly variable and diastaticus is a member of the Sacch. cerevisiae species and just variants of it.

If he can taste diastaticus then he needs to start charging breweries as a one-mouth quality analysis laboratory and we can throw away our molecular biology equipment!

@Northern Brewer I have 099 and 590 but not the other strains you mentioned. I can throw them into the mix when I get the next round of tests.

 

[TANSTAAFB]

@TANSTAAFB Tasting diastaticus is a funny claim to make as there is no defining flavor of the identified strains. Saccharomyces as a genus is highly variable and diastaticus is a member of the Sacch. cerevisiae species and just variants of it.

If he can taste diastaticus then he needs to start charging breweries as a one-mouth quality analysis laboratory and we can throw away our molecular biology equipment!

@Northern Brewer I have 099 and 590 but not the other strains you mentioned. I can throw them into the mix when I get the next round of tests.

My thoughts exactly. He's a good guy but bombastic is not an inaccurate descriptor!

 

[Azura]

The amount of paranoia regarding brett and most recently diasticus is waaay overblown. After hundreds of funky and clean brews I have never had an over attenuation problem and freely mix my fermenters with whatever microbes I want. Cleaning and sanitation works very well. Funky fermenters get hit with bleach first, then iodine just to be extra sure.

 

[SoCal-Doug]

The president of the local brew Club (also a biologist) tasted a saison in which I had tossed dregs of some good funky beers from Jester King, and said he could taste the diastaticus. Is that even possible?!

I'll hoist the BS flag on that, unless some bio guru can prove it throws detectable and tastable chemistry not similar to that of any other sacc c. The result of an "active" STA1 gene (or maybe STA2 or STA3) would result in a decrease of body, head, and maybe a little less malty. All of those vary anyway and can be caused by many things other than the very rare diastaticus muching down on more than we wanted them too. Having the gene does not mean it will show itself. Lots of brunettes have the redhead gene but you would never know it unless they throw a ginger offspring.

 

[xico]

@Azura I agree good cleaning practices will generally keep contaminations in the background. But that doesn't mean you don't have contaminants in your process, you are just doing well to keep their populations in the noise. Homebrewing is allowed to be more forgiving than commercial setups for reasons you can review in this thread.

It's not paranoia to discuss organisms that can cause undesired effects in fermentations, especially not when those effects can potentially hurt someone. Just because you have had only impeccable brews and your process is better than an auto-clave doesn't mean the information shared is not valuable to someone else.

No one has advised not to use brett, diastaticus, or lactic acid bacteria. I use them all along with a bunch of other yeast. Like any tool in the trade, it's important for people to know their functions and their flaws so they can be best utilized. It's science, not paranoia fella.

 

[Azura]

@Azura I agree good cleaning practices will generally keep contaminations in the background. But that doesn't mean you don't have contaminants in your process, you are just doing well to keep their populations in the noise. Homebrewing is allowed to be more forgiving than commercial setups for reasons you can review in this thread.

It's not paranoia to discuss organisms that can cause undesired effects in fermentations, especially not when those effects can potentially hurt someone. Just because you have had only impeccable brews and your process is better than an auto-clave doesn't mean the information shared is not valuable to someone else.

No one has advised not to use brett, diastaticus, or lactic acid bacteria. I use them all along with a bunch of other yeast. Like any tool in the trade, it's important for people to know their functions and their flaws so they can be best utilized. It's science, not paranoia fella.

Oh..OK, 'science brewer' that claims to not be paranoid. Brett and diasticus don't require an autoclave to die. Fact. Simple sanitation is all that is required. Regardless, I'll bet the majority of homebrew is infected to a degree that doesn't matter. A reliable way to avoid bottle bombs is to buy a keg or be a very patient bottler which few people are.

What is your solution to ease the diasticus paranoia that the homebrew pod casters and other media have exacerbated?

 

[Calder]

I know this doesn't happen in practice, but why are hops not covered with wild yeasts like just about all other vegetation? Is it the kilning? Is the handling post-kilning so well isolated from the raw hop processing areas that reintroduction of spores is prevented? Seems like a hop farm would be permeated by whatever wild spores raw hops contain.

Hops don't necessarily get heated. Many of them are just air-dried. For Commercial purposes, the maximum temperature they can be exposed to during the drying process is 140 F

Now i'm getting a case of the pointys. Did the 644 come through with any sour or was it just generally more funky? I like brett's but i'm just not patient enough. I've heard that 644 is kind of a fake and fast replacement.

644 is just a sacc yeast. No Brett in the mix.

 

[SoCal-Doug]

644 is just a sacc yeast. No Brett in the mix.

Yes. That's why I said that I've heard it's a "fake and faster" alternative to brett.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

This paper might be relevant on the subject of Saccharomyces forming biofilms :
Evaluation of the ability of commercial wine yeasts to form biofilms (mats) and adhere to plastic: implications for the microbiota of the winery environment

 

[xico]

@Azura, every development in sophistication the homebrew community achieves the better brewers we all become. Reducing this thread to being alarmist is essentially saying "I'm taking time out of my life to assert that your discussion is meaningless to me." That doesn't contribute a thing to the conversation and dismisses the participants' interest.

@Northern_Brewer biofilms of yeast are something I don't know much about. I've read about biofilms in bacteria at some length but it's interesting to know yeast can do so as well. Thanks for the share.

 

[Azura]

@Azura, every development in sophistication the homebrew community achieves the better brewers we all become. Reducing this thread to being alarmist is essentially saying "I'm taking time out of my life to assert that your discussion is meaningless to me." That doesn't contribute a thing to the conversation and dismisses the participants' interest.

3711 has been available for many years. Many homebrewers have used it and sanitized their 'clean' fermenters with nothing more than Oxiclean and Starsan. 3711 has not created a homebrew over attenuation pandemic for many thousands of users.

The reason this is a discussion right now is White Labs is being sued for diasticus contamination by Left Hand. WL isn't famous because they produce containment free products 100% of the time. Podcasters and bloggers dropped a diasticus paranoia bomb on some of the homebrew community. The rest of us just shrugged.

You have falsely claimed I intended to render this discussion "meaningless" simply because I have never had a problem fermenting clean beers in 'dirty' fermenters that have previously contained diasticus, brett, pediococcus, lactobacillus and at least 50 other nasty wild bugs from real Belgian Lambics. Strong sanitation is a helluva drug!

 

[SoCal-Doug]

Did some tasting at a Karl Strauss brewery today. While chatting with the waiter and the local brewer we got on the subject of contamination and paranoia. They have 3711, 566 and Brett in many of their brews, none of their locations have had a problem due to (in the brewers own words) "we know how to keep our $hit clean and we are patient enough to not bottle early".

I highly recommend their 29th anniversary Saison. 1 year Pino Nior barrel aged, heavily Brett'ed, STA1 fermented, and all da funk you could want. Freaking yummy. I actually bought a growler knowing it would be gone soon.

Their Brett'ed stout was quite nice too. More like a light porter, but seriously tasty. Finally, the Kolsch was heavenly and pure german textbook flavor. I couldn't get him to cough up which yeast they use though.

 

[TANSTAAFB]

Took my split batch saison (WLP644 Saccharomyces Bruxellensis Trois, WLP590 French Saison, and US-05 as a clean comparison to see what flavors were yeast driven and what were recipe driven) to the club meeting and the French Saison was the overwhelming favorite. I need to do another with DuPont. I think the diastaticus issue is interesting and I get why contamination is an issue for breweries that have to deal with shelf stability, but on a homebrew basis? Don't really care. Apparently diastaticus is delicious!

 

[xico]

My lab partner ran 3711 and it is a diastaticus. It's what we already knew but I will bring more news as we start testing more strains with our new primers.

 

[Smellyglove]

From what information I've gathered from just reading forums. 3711 is a diastaticus, but does not leave a biofilm like Belle Saison does. It's the biofilm which is "dangerous". I've read several people having troubles after using Belle, but not after using 3711. I have myself never used Belle Saison because I got suspicious after reading initial first hand experiences with it (before I even know what Diastaticus is), and will never use it because of the biofilm it often leaves behind.

there are lots of strains which carry the STA1 (or the other) genes. Many of them exhibit a Diastaticus behavior. Most common are the ones called "French Saison". I guess some of them might be sourced from the same brewery/place/area.

Belle Saison
3711
BE-256
MJ M29
WLP590

Are the ones i know from the top of my head.

 

[Miraculix]

So how long does it take for those diastatic strains to reach final gravity? Do they chew on the long carbohydrates for months after botteling so that you might have an unpleasant surprise after three months?

 

[Smellyglove]

So how long does it take for those diastatic strains to reach final gravity? Do they chew on the long carbohydrates for months after botteling so that you might have an unpleasant surprise after three months?

Yes. That's a common issue. You measure a "stable" FG, bottle, and it just keeps chewing away slowly if there's enough starches left.

 

[TANSTAAFB]

Any updates @xico?

 

[Jayjay1976]

So how long does it take for those diastatic strains to reach final gravity? Do they chew on the long carbohydrates for months after botteling so that you might have an unpleasant surprise after three months?

In my experience with 3711, it seem to march pretty steadily toward the FG; so long as you establish that FG has truly been reached by observing 3 identical gravity measurements spaced 3-5 days apart, you should not be concerned about bottle bombs.

 

[thehaze]

I've used BE-134 from Fermentis and it reached FG in 13 days. It went from 1.070 to 1.007 ( 89% AA and 8.2% ABV! ) and 30 days after bottling, I had no gushers or exploding bottles. The yeast itself was bland tasting. Definitely not Dupont quality.

 

[xico]

Interesting about the Belle Saison, I was under the impression it was the same strain but I can't find information about 3711 producing a biofilm. I can run them in a couple experiments to see if they are the same or different and let you know.

 

[SoCal-Doug]

Testing positive for STA1 does not guarantee that it will exhibit adverse or negative behaviors. Home and commercial brewers have used 3711 (and many other strains) for many years without it creating bottle bombs beyond the standard fermentation period. There is a specific note on WL's website for 566 and testing positive for the STA1 gene. I've used it (as well as 3711 and others) at least 25 times each, and never had an issue, and loved the results.

The answer is simple. Know what you are doing. Know what you are dealing with. Practice good hygiene. You can successfully make malt vinegar easier than being victimized by STA1.

 

[Shenanigans]

Just found this thread now and think I might be affected by this.
well its a possibility anyway. I get a lot of over carbed beers in the bottle and have tried all the tricks.
Let ferment longer, increase the temperature to finish it off, use less sugar for conditioning.
I have used Belle Saison 3 times.

I don't want to have to buy all new equipment but I'd like to see if additional sanitation makes a difference.
If I was to soak everything in a bleach solution for 24 hours what concentration should I use?
The normal 1 table spoon to 1 gallon water concentration or would I need to be more heavy handed?

Thanks

 

[bleme]

Bleach, heat and iodopher are all more effective against yeasts than StarSan is. If you're really worried, you could do all 3, just not at the same time...

 

[ba-brewer]

Bleach, heat and iodopher are all more effective against yeasts than StarSan is. If you're really worried, you could do all 3, just not at the same time...

How much heat and for how long?

I seen someone post if the yeast leaves a bio-film then you also need to physically scrub it too.

 

[bleme]

How much heat and for how long?

I seen someone post if the yeast leaves a bio-film then you also need to physically scrub it too.

Biofilm won't protect it from heat. I've always used my dishwasher or boiling water.
http://howtobrew.com/book/section-1/brewing-preperations/sanitation/sanitizing-your-equipment