Has anyone tried this? I'm thinking of trying to make my own house yeast strain. Can I take 2 yeasts with characteristics I like and mix them to create a new strain? Will both strains still produce there characteristics. Just a thought on doing something that I can call my own. Yes I'm sure someone will reply back that wyeast already has a strain for anything I may want but then I can't call it my own. Any thoughts?
Hillbilly biologist
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That's not a strain, that's a blend. 
You can do it; it might change over time as one of the yeasts crowds out the other. Or you might end up with something stable right from the start.
Someday I'm going to start with bread yeast and see if I can evolve that into a wheat beer yeast. But not until I brew a lot more normal beers; I don't get to brew often enough for mad scientist experiments.
Good luck!
You can do it; it might change over time as one of the yeasts crowds out the other. Or you might end up with something stable right from the start.Someday I'm going to start with bread yeast and see if I can evolve that into a wheat beer yeast. But not until I brew a lot more normal beers; I don't get to brew often enough for mad scientist experiments.
Good luck!
Hmmm, I'm interested in this also. From what I have read after reusing/harvesting yeast for a few fermentations in a row that the yeast will mutate into what is basically then your "house yeast". However I'm not sure how major of a difference there is from the original.
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You can mix two strains of yeast in a flask, but they will not hybridize into a new strain. You will have two strains fermenting along side each other. Usually people make a "house strain" by choosing a yeast they like and fermenting with it, washing the left over yeast, then repeat, repeat, repeat. The yeast will mutate slowly over time and can "adapt" itself to your equipment and fermentation conditions. This would then be your house strain. This can be tricky since sanitation will be of the utmost importance and home brewers often have trouble in that department.
You would need to make many successive fermentations where by in each you apply certain selective pressures and then harvest the yeast from the part of yeast crop that will give you the traits you want. Difficult in a short time frame and typical homebrew setup
RachmaelBenApplebaum
Well-Known Member
Unless you capture and isolate wild yeast via plating, it's more of a blend, and more likely has a variety of other native microflora depending on what goes into the wort or how it's inoculated (e.g. raw fruit from trees in your yard etc.) and may or may not turn out funky. Blends are good much of the time if the yeasts play well together (not a sensitive and a killer yeast combined).
Yeah, but... Yeast are asexual and reproduce by budding new cells, not by doing the ol' horizontal Charleston.
Yeast blending is a very real and valuable skill though. I have come to suspect certain proprietary yeast strains (cough...Conan) are blended strains and not unique. With enough generations of yeast you can alter the fermentation character in the yeast as well, but that requires very precise fermentation control to achieve.
NO!
Yeast is asexual, in that it will only produce it's own and will not mix with another strain.
Eventually one strain will become dominant, and you will be left with a single strain.
......... Now that strain could have mutated and given you a new strain.
suregork
Well-Known Member
Yeasts can definitely reproduce sexually and mate with other yeasts. Saccharomyces yeast are typically diploid (with an a/alpha mating type), and these can undergo sporulation and meiosis to produce 4 haploid spores (with either a or alpha mating type). Haploid cells with opposite mating type can then mate to form a new diploid cell. In a lab, this can be done quite easily with sporulation media and a micromanipulator. However, most brewing strains are aneuploid and either sporulate poorly or don't produce many viable spores. There are many exceptions though.
While it is true that by simply mixing two yeast strains in a batch of wort, one will over time become dominant, it is still very likely that some hybrid cells actually form. The only problem is that this is very rare (typically around 1 cell in 10^7-10^8 cells), and picking out these in a home environment would be impossible. If these hybrid cells would outperform the parent strains though, it is possible that they would start dominating the population after many many generations. There are certain tricks that can be used to pick out these hybrids formed from 'rare mating' from a yeast population, and I've used it successfully to create some interesting hybrids:
Conan x WLP644 hybrid:
http://beer.suregork.com/?p=3747
New lager yeasts:
http://beer.suregork.com/?p=3626
http://beer.suregork.com/?p=3639
But yes, as the others have mentioned, by simply mixing two strains in a batch of wort you will just get a mixed population and eventually one strain dominating the other. You may have some hybrid strains in the population, but it will be impossible for you to pick them out.
ok, so lots of you are saying that to make a house strain the best option is to pitch successive batches with one strain and the yeast will adapt and mutate. now am I right in my understanding that it is best to harvest from a full healthy Krausen rather than just pitching on top of a yeast cake?
