Yeast lab?

Is it possible to have a small scale yeast lab at home to isolate strains and all that stuff the commercial breweries do?

Some people do have "yeast ranches" that they keep. There are many different ways that people choose to keep their yeasties viable, from stored slurry to slants. Google searching should yield you many good resources, several on this very site.

ftlstrings said:

Some people do have "yeast ranches" that they keep. There are many different ways that people choose to keep their yeasties viable, from stored slurry to slants. Google searching should yield you many good resources, several on this very site.

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A yeast ranch ..that is awesome

I do small scale Yeast ranching.

Which method for storage do you use Patthebrewer?

yeast wranglers

If you're interested in this a good place to start would be Chris White's book Yeast. It goes over some of that stuff that is achievable at home. I've tried a few things: started with rinsing or washing and thought that was a pain. After that I tried freezing which didn't really work because my freezer had a defrost cycle which I think ended up kill everything. Now I am doing a combination of things. I do have a variety of yeast slants set up with five different strains and I also just do a better job of planning so I brew a beer and then just reusing the yeast for a handful of batches. No rinsing, no washing. I just dump it in a mason jar or pitch right on top. The slants are cool to have and have already built up two starters for two successful beers from them so I know it works so far.

ftlstrings said:

Which method for storage do you use Patthebrewer?

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I have a fridge I use for lagering that also contains my small yeast library(nothing exotic, only a few strains that I use the most).