Coopers Yeasts Origin

[CleanEmUpIves]

Looking for information on the origin of the Coopers ale and lager yeasts.

The Ale yeast has been claimed to be Mauribrew Ale Yeast 514 though some are fiercely opposed to the idea.

The Mauribrew brand seems to have Ale, Lager, Draught and Weiss style yeasts. (See screenshot below.)

The AB Mauri and AB Biotek websites offer no information about the Mauribrew brand.

Coopers indicates that their Original series yeast is "our own strain, not the same as the yeast in our commercial ales, developed in-house and propagated under contract".

Coopers also indicates that the International and Thomas Coopers series yeast - "these strains are commercially available dry yeast and their details are held in confidence".

Is anyone aware of DNA sequence matching (is that the correct terminology?) that has been done on these yeasts?

Improve or Enhance a Coopers Standard Lager Can With a Better Yeast

I stand corrected, on further digging I see that the Mauri yeasts are not used in the original series, according to Coopers. They all use their own yeast, code name Ac that isn't their bottle yeast which they can't dry successfully, but another strain developed in house (see below for explanation)

The other series, International and Thomas Coopers, use various combinations of Ac, L (Lager) and A (Ale). They say the suppliers of the L and A are confidential but I've seen it posted in various places that they are the Mauribrew yeasts.
So I'd take a punt that their own Ac yeast is also propagated and dried at Mauri. In your case Wynnum it would depend on what tin you got the original yeast off.

(from a Coopers PDF)
The following explains the ink-jetted code on the yeast sachets, supplied with each beer kit:
Sachets carry a Julian date code and may also carry letters to denote the type of yeast. For example, if they were packaged on the 25th of September 2007 = 268th day of 2007:

Original Series:- Ac (26807)

International Series:-
Australian Pale Ale - Ac+L (26807 Int)
Mexican Cerveza - Ac+L (26807 Int)
European Lager - L (26807 P)
Canadian Blonde - Ac (26807)
English Bitter - Ac (26807)

Thomas Coopers Selection:-
Wheat - A (26807 W)
IPA - Ac (26807 IPA)
Irish Stout - A (26807 IS)
Pilsener - L (26807 P)
Australian Bitter - Ac+L (26807 PS)
Heritage Lager - Ac+L (26807 PS)
Sparkling Ale - Ac+L (26807 PS)
Traditional Draught - Ac+L (26807 PS)

Note:
Ac = Coopers ale yeast (our own strain, not the same as the yeast in our commercial ales, developed in-house and propagated under contract).
A = ale yeast and L = lager yeast (these strains are commercially available dry yeast and their details are held in confidence).

 

[dwhite60]

I like Coopers retail homebrewing yeast. Clean, settles fast and sticks to the bottom of the bottle.

 

[ebbelwoi]

FWIW, I'm a fan of Mauribrew Weiss.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I'm not aware of any public sequences of Mauribrew strains. This comment by "notmyrealname" is the most plausible version I've seen for the complex tale of Cooper yeasts but I have little independent information on the matter, other than a "Cooper" yeast of some kind is sequenced and is a close outlier of the main British group :

https://beer.suregork.com/?p=4030#comment-700798