In addition to what Lallemand has disclosed about how they ended up with Nottingham yeast, I've been reading a book called "A Guide to Craft Brewing" by John Alexander which has some information regarding the possible origin of Nottingham. The author had been a homebrewer since the 1970's and published the book in 2006.
"During 1974-75, the Boots Company of Nottingham introduced a true brewing strain (NCYC 1245, fermentation characteristics 1:5:5:5:5) suspended in an isotonic mannitol solution; this liquid culture contained 20ml, each millilitre containing 10^5 of cells, and it was propagated prior to brewing.
By 1985, the technology for drying this type of yeast was developed, and the liquid yeast became available in dried form." pg. 97
After reading that, I did some internet searching and found this description for Nottingham on the
Scott Laboratories website cached by the Wayback machine in 2004. Scott Labs is a business partner and distributor for Lallemand.
"NOTTINGHAM - S. cerevisiae . cerevisiae
Properties are similar to the strain NCYC 1245. Demonstrates full attenuation and strong flocculation characteristics. It has low concentrations of fruity and estery-ale aromas and has been described as neutral for an ale yeast."
So that seems to be confirmation that Nottingham yeast was originally the NCYC 1245 strain. A user on
Jim's Beer Kit forum posted this description of 1245.
"1245: anonymized British Brewery ale strain, no head, fairly flocculent, high attenuating, modern non-top-cropping behavior well-suited to conical fermentors, good flavour, a popular historic English ale production strain, #3 in NCYC "Top Ten Yeasts" for commercial brewing, 1965."
This is the current description in the
NCYC website:
"Flocculent. NewFlo type flocculation. O3, DMS 33 µg/l.
Used commercially in conical batch fermenters good flavour, fairly flocculent, non-head-forming, Contains 2µ plasmid.
Confirmed as a single strain by DNA 'fingerprinting' in 1998.
Depositor: British Brewery
Deposit Name: Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Month of deposit: August
Deposit Year: 1965
Habitat: Ale production strain.
Equivalent Strain Designations: Unknown
Reference: Unknown"