Franconia Beer Message Board

Of franconian yeast
Posted by Nor on 2020-06-05 10:29:58
A topic very close to my heart.

Brewing yeast is somewhat of a shared good in Franconia. The majority of mid-size family breweries and smaller get yeast slurry from the next bigger local brewery. Ie. Hummel is supplying alot of smaller breweries with their yeast. As a result many breweries are using the same culture, some of them repitching but the majority using starting up with fresh pitches. The yeast diversity in Germany is quite low ie. compared to the British Family Breweries, who traditionally build a culture and identity on their house cultures. You can also notice how different British and German technical brewing literature and Industry/Trade bodies developed over the 20th century, the German one standardizing heavily and thereby achieving an excellent technical brewing culture - Vorsprung durch Technik. Also Weihenstephan is very close. While there is a lot of focus on Gaerfuehrung in Germany, there are few breweries commited to their yeast cultures. There are actually a fair amount of breweries using what is classically/technically called Ale cultures unknowingly, yet fermenting cold. Genetic sequentation has redrawn alot of lines in the last years.

I tend to like the Franconian breweries that have rather expressive yeast notes, but i'd be very doubtful that there are many repitching continously. With some luck there are a few pitching similary to Uerige: repitch for ~6 month before going back to the mother culture. But the narrative has been that the cold fermentation is too stressful on industrial scale to repitch for long times. There are quite a few studies out showing it. I'm strongly beliving that with the right attention it would be workable though. Id start looking at breweries with open fermenters. Fresh pitch is very deply entrenched in the until recently required brewing education. But to finally get to your question, I've heard from a brewer via their yeast lab of one eastern Franconian brewery (locating in a castle or similar) who is continously repitching their culture. But they must have only started a few years ago, as they were at ~600 pitches last year, i think. Never figured out who it was though.
 
Followups:
     Of franconian yeast by FredW on  2020-06-05 10:41:15
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