Curiosity about maintaining Yeast Strains more than 4 "generations"

[Elijah]

I have learnt a lot reading the articles and threads on cultivating, preserving, freezing yeast (as well as wild yeast!) etc.

I can't help not imagine myself "hunting" for a wild yeast strain that would work better than any other strain in the horrid hot weather my beer suffers!

However, if used only for 4 batches (as for 4 generations) how would a home brewer preserve the strain he just discovered and could save the whole industry in case of global warming?

 

[kh54s10]

Laboratory controlled culturing selecting the pure strain and reproducing it. How they do it is beyond my knowledge.

Generally this is not within the realm of ordinary homebrewers.

4 is also an arbitrary number, many go 10 generations. There are some that can risk batches, and will go until it mutates into something nasty/different.

I make a starter with a new yeast a bit bigger than needed then freeze 4 vials. If I made 4 new vials when using one I can make 256 brews from the original sample in 4 generations.

 

[Kinsman]

I've gone ten generations just washing the yeast. I didn't use the method on the sticky (I'm gonna start), but similar. I was really careful with sanitation every time I handled it, and even wore a silk face mask, western style. I don't know if the mask actually helped, but it looked really cool.

 

[Curtis2010]

I usually brew with fresh yeast strains at the start of the season and then bank them. Then I typically take a sample from a saved batch of yeast and step it up to pitch. In effect only using second generation.