Does Anyone Have Their Own 'house' Yeast Strain?

[DR.RELAX]

hi
just wondering if anyone has managed to develop their own strain of yeast by reculturing or re using trub etc etc for an extended period of time and if its turned out any good?i imagine thats how different strains developed in the first place.
just a thought that i'd like to try out if anyone has had success?

 

[Dazza_devil]

I have often wondered about this myself. Mutation might be a good thing.

 

[InCider]

Depends on how much the guest party with us.

 

[seravitae]

I think this is a very undervalued/underexplored area of home brewing.

Probably because most commercial breweries which are highly conservative about their yeast genetics, and a sort of emulation now exists in home brewers. However, remember that some good beers are produced with wild strains of mostly uncharactarized genetics.

It would be nice to see more brewers breaking that "only reuse yeast a couple of times" rules of thumb and letting their yeasts mutate, even as a side project.



Who knows, you might end up with the next hot-topic yeast strain...

 

[rude]

yep that would be right an infection

having said that sometimes 2nd time 3rd time round is a bit mellower better balanced ????

 

[katzke]

The old brewers must have been good or just lucky.

It is my understanding that any of the breweries that have a house yeast are either big enough to have the lab facilities to manage it, or are having a yeast producer do it for them.

The only home brewer that I have ever heard of that has a house yeast is Charley Papazian. It was taken from a brewery but apparently developed its own character. He thought that he lost it at one point.

 

[ajdougall]

I would guess that you could evolve your own strain by applying some sort of selection pressure. This could be high or low temperatures, bright sunlight, acid water, alkaline water, cold shock, high OG, specific additives etc etc.

From what I have read from Richard Dawkins it would only take two or three brews to develop your own strain.

 

[Nick JD]

Most of the time new strains of things come about by crossing two old strains.

Waiting for favourable mutation is gonna take forever and a lot of work.

Yeast have a sexual reproduction mode - just got to stress them right and have the two strains in the same place. Instead of budding off another normal yeast cell, they bud off one with only half the genes ... that finds another with half the genes and they join together.

 

[Jazzafish]

sure you could do it. I personally don't due to time/facility issues. Happy with the available whitelab and wyeast products, and normally rather to do a few batches per packet... but I'm not against the idea.

If you plan on doing it properly I'd look at getting a microscope for visual recognition and doing some serious yeast washing research.

 

[Spartan 117]

I have often wondered about this myself. Mutation might be a good thing.

Well it can be according to Darwin :icon_cheers:

 

[Spartan 117]

Ok, I've posted this a few times on the discussion of yeast and I'm gonna post it again but this time 'round I'm gonna make a big deal of it.

Hey Guy's, If you'ld like an understanding of how mutations work to favour one sub strait or another you should read Richard Dawkins book "The Greates Show on Earth" on page 116 there is a great piece about Richard Lenski and his (and his teams) work on e.coli and how they evolve and the conditions upon which they do so favourably, the link is a short wiki on the experiment.

Enjoy

Aaron

 

[seravitae]

No offence but Dawkins is not a good source of information for mostly anything, certainly not microbiology. I would much sooner redirect people to microbiology textbooks over an egotistical and highly arrogant philosophical/anti-religious writer..

 

[goatus]

Dawkins is a quite respected evolutionary bioligist, his critisism of creationism came later.

Back on topic, I would be really interested to know if anybody tries this to some extent. What would be your approach? I am not sure how you would determine which conditons to manipulate would cause the characteristics you are after in the new strain of yeast. I suppose there is always blind luck

Survival of the fittest just became survival of the tastiest

 

[seravitae]

Dawkins, R. (1969). "Bees Are Easily Distracted"

Dawkins, R. (1997). "The Pope's message on evolution: Obscurantism to the rescue". The Quarterly Review of Biology 72 (4): 397–399.

yep, real microbiology going on here..

He may be a respected evolutionary biologist, yet his refereed papers indicate little to no microbiology except reference to mutations/genetics and references to other workers. So i'd consider him off-topic as he doesnt actually have anything useful to provide to the practical subject of growing and mutating yeast at home.

Again I recommend a practical microbiology textbook.




Back on topic, the yeast will evolve itself naturally under differing conditions, so you could try taking a yeast and using it under an unexpected grain bill, and fermenting it out, taking the trub, repeating, for a number of generations and note the changes in properties. You'd need some serious kit to see whats going on at the genetic level but you can always just taste it and see

At bare minimum if you want to work decently I suggest rigging up a HEPA based laminar flow hood and getting some good filtration system so you can dialise your trub to get your yeast, some stains and a decent optical microscope.

 

[Dazza_devil]

All very interesting, but has anyone continued to reuse a specific yeast from the trub for an extended amount of time and what observations did you note?

 

[gap]

I think the issue would be how do you maintain the "house" strain once you are
satisfied with its characteristics.
How do you stop it from further mutation?

Regards

Graeme

 

[Dazza_devil]

I think the issue would be how do you maintain the "house" strain once you are
satisfied with its characteristics.
How do you stop it from further mutation?

Regards

Graeme

Perhaps, but I would presume this to be impossible without taking major and expensive precautions.

Personally, I wouldn't be concerned over any mutation if it was going to change my beers positively over time. With all the other variables concerned it's impossible to brew the same beer exactly the same twice anyway. I'm inspired to do a bit more research on this matter but I would think that mutation would be bring about a very subtle change from one brew to the next. Perhaps even improve them over time.

 

[Swinging Beef]

Kinda on topic...
I introduced some Orval dreggs to a beer I made last year that felt lacked character.
The result was outstanding!
However, every beer Ive made since then has the same sour, tangy notes that the Orval posesses, to varying degrees.
It seems that the larger starter of yeast I pitch, the more subdued the brett characteristics, but they are certainly there.
Initially this freaked me out and I was really annoyed that I might never brew a clean, malty beer again, until I realised I could just brew to styles that the Brett characteristic will improve rather than diminish.
So.. Im working to that plan.
All my beers will have a planned degree of 'house yeast' character to them, despite being primarily fermented with a commercially available yeast.

 

[praxis178]

I think the issue would be how do you maintain the "house" strain once you are
satisfied with its characteristics.
How do you stop it from further mutation?

Regards

Graeme

You can't stop the mutations in the brew, but when you get a strain your happy with put aside the trub on ice and only use a very small amount of it to build your starters from. This way each subsequent brew is only one generation away from the original..... If you work clean and under the right conditions you can use just a few milligrams to get a starter going.

 

[Nick JD]

I'm all for experimentation but inducing mutation in yeast strains that are already damn near perfect is a little silly IMO. What you are really going to achieve is most likely worse.

Breeding two strains together that both have desirable characteristics sounds promising though - and possible.