ECY-15 Munich Festbier Equivalent?

[barrooze]

I brewed a Festbier-type with ECY-15 a couple years ago and the yeast character was amazing. It was malty, creamy, had amazing mouthfeel, and made you keep want to grab another pint.

I'd love to make the beer again, but since East Coast Yeast is rather hard to come by, I can't source the yeast. Does anyone know if there's an equivalent yeast available from White Labs or Wyeast or even a smaller company like Gigayeast that is more widely available thank ECY?

I've done a search and found in here someone identifying it as the Hacker-Pschorr yeast. From this I take it as their lager yeast, not their Hefe yeast . By listening to Jamil's description of White Labs Southern German Lager yeast WLP838, this may be close. It sounds like that's an equivalent of Wyeasy 2308, Munich Lager.

I may try my hand at this beer again but use WLP838 or 2308, but will definitely keep my eyes out for ECY15 as it was delicious!

 

[giraffe]

The 308 strain, 838/2308 is a good strain, and makes a traditional tasting a munich lager. But i doubt ECY would use such a common strain though. It may be the Augustiner strain by the description, which was just available as a wyeast seasonal, 2352, Or from Imperial yeast as L17. But ecy lists 46F at the low end, which is alot lower than other yeast labs say.

wlp920 is my favorite munich strain and matches your description. Its sourced from an old brewtek strain of, as far as i know, unknown origin. Unfortunately its a nov/dec seasonal.

 

[barrooze]

The 308 strain, 838/2308 is a good strain, and makes a traditional tasting a munich lager. But i doubt ECY would use such a common strain though. It may be the Augustiner strain by the description, which was just available as a wyeast seasonal, 2352, Or from Imperial yeast as L17. But ecy lists 46F at the low end, which is alot lower than other yeast labs say.

wlp920 is my favorite munich strain and matches your description. Its sourced from an old brewtek strain of, as far as i know, unknown origin. Unfortunately its a nov/dec seasonal.

Thanks for the reply! Sounds like I need to do a double batch of this beer next time and try one half with 308 and the other with WLP920. I like the name of WLP920, "Old Bavarian Lager Yeast". Sounds to match the description of ECY15 pretty well, "From one of the oldest breweries in Munich".

Thanks again!

 

[giraffe]

And some of the other ecy strains are also old brewtek strains. So id give a high probability they may be the same strains.

 

[gometz]

You may want to check out WLP860, which should be released shortly. I've made a number of great helles with that and plan to use it on a festbier soon. In fact I've been repitching my strain single last April.