Different Lab's Different Recommended Temps

[FunkedOut]

I noticed such a wide variance in the fermentation temperatures recommended by different yeast labs for the same strain.
I decided to make a graph to take it all in at once a little easier.
Just a few randoms strains (the ones I use):

Any thoughts on why their recommendations would vary so wildly?
The one that seems most out of line is the Chico strain.
Some of those recommendation are mutually exclusive.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Any thoughts on why their recommendations would vary so wildly?
The one that seems most out of line is the Chico strain.
Some of those recommendation are mutually exclusive.

You have to remember that most yeast is happiest growing at ~30C/86F - we brew at lower temperatures to control off-flavours. So a lot depends on the exact process a lab uses to test their yeast and how sensitive to off-flavours the testers are - the optimum temperature for a 1040 wort mashed low may be different to a 1080 wort mashed high, it will vary a bit depending on pitch rate, fermenter geometry, all sorts of variables. So these can only be rough guidelines.

Also you have to remember that yeast from different companies are not the same - there's certainly big differences between members of the Conan family from different companies, and White Labs have proven that WLP001 is different to 1056 by sequencing them, and they definitely brew differently - see this thread for more details.

More generally people are discovering that a lot of the supposed red lines between different yeast strains are far more malleable than they thought - in particular not everyone has caught up with the fact that Frohberg yeast like 34/70 are rather more heat tolerant than traditional lager thinking would have you believe, whereas DNA sequencing has shown that a lot of commercial lager is being made with ale yeasts. They're adaptable little beasties.