Imperial Yeast A30 Corporate

[Hayden123982]

Genus brewing posted a YouTube video on Corporate a few weeks ago and did a side by side with Flagship too. Definitely worth checking out. I have a pack in the fridge I’ll be doing a Brut IPA with

 

[HomemadeSauce]

Brewed a SMaSh with Amarillo and Skagit Valley's Talisman Pale (somewhat similar to Maris Otter). Really simple brew: 1.050, 40 IBU with about half of the hops added at whirlpool, fermenting at 68*F. I have been slightly shocked at how, a week in, the krausen has hardly dropped at all. My plan is to ferment a milk stout of some sort on the yeast cake whenever the current batch finishes up.

 

[couchsending]

I sent an email to a brewery that I know uses it as their house yeast to see if they have any tips/tricks. Not sure if I’ll get a response but I’ll post something here if I do.

 

[couchsending]

Wow got a super fast response from the brewery I emailed. Here’s their advice on how to best use A30.

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Tank Time 13 days no DH, 20 days DH

Ferment at 67-68
bump it to 70 after 5 days
VDK rest 60-72 hrs after terminal before crashing or dry-hopping.

Warmer it ferments the more red fruit you get.

 

[Upthewazzu]

Wow got a super fast response from the brewery I emailed. Here’s their advice on how to best use A30.

—————————

Tank Time 13 days no DH, 20 days DH

Ferment at 67-68
bump it to 70 after 5 days
VDK rest 60-72 hrs after terminal before crashing or dry-hopping.

Warmer it ferments the more red fruit you get.

Mind sharing the name of the brewery?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Looking at the specs - decent attenuation & flocculation, wide temperature range - A30 looks rather similar to Wyeast 1217, which may be the Stone yeast. Stone got their yeast from Pyramid, who are a decade older than Elysian and like them were headquartered in Seattle (for a while).

So Elysian certainly had the opportunity to get their yeast from Pyramid.

FWIW, 1271 is a Q1 seasonal release, if anyone with A30 wants to compare the two....

 

[couchsending]

I would say they’re rather different yeasts having used both.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

You can say for sure that Elysian use a closely related version of the Imperial yeast, but unless both Imperial and Elysian are drawing off the same vials for their production it won't be identical, there will be subtle differences. But my real point is that this yeast did not spring into existence at Elysian in 1995, it will have come from somewhere else....

Sure, my previous post was pure speculation - but at least it generates a hypothesis that can be tested by anyone with access to Corporate, the Stone yeast and a PCR machine.

And we now have the answer, courtesy of a new preprint from the Dunham lab in Seattle (as discussed here) - Elysian use BRY-96, the putative ancestor of the Chico family, and A30 Corporate is the closest homebrew relative (but not identical, and you could count the mutations in publicly available databases if you could be bothered).

 

[couchsending]

Weird. It shows absolutely zero resemblance to Chico. Not in fermentation, flavor, flocculation .

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Well flocculation is one of those things that's so malleable and heavily-selected-for that I wouldn't pay much attention to it.

And define what you mean by "Chico" - as that paper shows even the Chico family has some major variation within it. And just changing a single DNA "letter" in the 1056/US-05 subgroup, knocks out an enzyme involved in leucine/valine metabolism which has far-reaching effects on the yeast's biochemistry, that leads to it producing more banana ester and fusels among other things. And the BRY-96 group has an extra copy of chromosome V, whilst the WLP001 group has a recombination at the end of chromosome VIII.

 

[couchsending]

US05, 1056, 001, 090 and for the most part Pac Man all act basically the same and produce a very similar beer. Mild differences.

A30 Corporate seems to be a top cropping strain and forms a huge krausen. It’s very prone to diacetyl. It’s rather slow, and has this ester I don’t get in any other “Cal Ale” strain. It’s a lot closer to the Bell’s yeast in character and performance than 001/1056/US05 that’s for sure. Although to me A30 is the worst to work with, at least the three times I used it.

I believe East Coast Yeast sells the Ballantine strain as ECY10. Using it a bunch now. Still to be determined but I’d probably chose it over all the “American Ale” strains I’ve tried.