Project Orval, the first pictures!

I have finally managed to take some pictures of some of my orval clones. On the left you can see one clone, probably Saccharomyces cerevisiae because of its rounded shape and budding daughter cell. On the right you see a clone with the working name "tiny colony" because it grew much slower on wort agar. Judging by its slow growth and its ogival shape, this is probably a brett strain. At least it's not Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Project Orval

My yeast bank is steadily growing. Untill recently I just saved commercial yeast and yeast from bottle-conditioned beer on slants or in the freezer. But last week I started a new project: "Project Orval". Orval beer is brewed using a Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast strain in primary permentation. According to Stan Hieronymus in "Brew lika a monk" Orval uses a "yeast from the area" in secundary fermentation. This "yeast" is supposed to be a mixture of yeasts of both Saccharomyces and Brettanomyces. For a yeast enthusiast like me this is an experimental gold mine. I have streaked out the dregs of an orval bottle on a wort agar plate and picked a whole range of colonies looking different. I have seen big, small and tiny colonies. Of those I have now more then 15 clones which I plan to test (either all or some) in small scale (500 ml) fermentations using a neutral wort. This should be enough to fill one bottle from each fermentation. I will then test all bottles after a few months and see how my strains behave.