monty73741

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digunderground

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never done it, but it sounds interesting...

So basically you are saying that starting with a high gravity yeast strain and continually reusing the yeast cake or washing the remaining yeast and reusing it, you will end up with a "super" strain? I think White labs already has a yeast strain that is good to 20% ABV or some crazy number like that, I cant imagine drinking a beer too much higher than that. you are verging close to a spirit or a beer schnapps / liquor.

beerthirty

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if you manage a utopia clone yeast, put me down for a tube. I'm gathering equipment to build a rare strain frozen bank. mainly so I will have access to seasonal and limited release strains year round.

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monty73741

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it is easier to evolve a single celled organism them a complicated one. Basicly why the common cold keeps mutating. It is the cells that are left over from the year before that survived the anti-boitics. Basicly keep breading yeast in a higher & higher alochol enviroment.

david_42

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You could test for punctuated evolution. Just mix some DME in a 20% alcohol solution and after a couple days, make a starter. Anything that survived is a heavy hitter.

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menschmaschine

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The common cold is from viruses (about 200 different types), which are just DNA surrounded by a protein coat. They are not like a bacterium and have no cell or cell membrane. In a scientific sense, they're not really "alive". Antibiotics are useless against them and often wrongly prescribed.

However, your analogy has some truth to it. It's called selective breeding and it's used throughout agriculture and even gave us domesticated animals.

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Professor Frink

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Agreed. The mutations in the common cold are not due to selective pressure, but are more naturally occuring. Now, superbacteria due to antibiotic resistance, that's different.

As far as developing a yeast that can handle high gravity, you can do it, but it takes a while. I believe Sam Adams spent about 10 years developing the Utopia yeast. You have to do it slowly because if you bombard the yeast with a 20% alcohol beer, you will likely kill most, if not all of them. The surviving yeasties will be so few in number and may not give you the fermentation aspects you want. By doing it slowly, you don't bottleneck the yeast you're selecting and are more likely to get the fermentation you're looking for.

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david_42

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Didn't say they'd be good yeast.

High gravity yeasts tend to produce high fusel alcohol levels. There are many distiller's yeasts that can handle 22% or more, but you would not want to drink the results.

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k1v1116

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I think the super yeast may have been bread by causing the yeast to undergo sexual reproduction instead of the normal budding that occurs in beer. Im not sure how to trigger sexual reproduction in yeast but I bet you could that info online somewhere.

menschmaschine

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I think fermenting the beer in the backseat of a Camaro would work.

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