Yeast experiment for high school team

[hrangil]

Greetings HBT: I'm planning a yeast evolution experiment, and looking for suggestions. My son and his friend -- both high school students -- want to play with yeast and document what happens when it mutates. Over the next year (give or take), we'll brew a series of parallel batches using a single yeast strain -- pitching the next batch on the earlier cake, and again, and again, and again, with one major difference in brewing conditions between parallel batches to prompt changes and theoretically different paths of mutation over the course of several generations of yeast.

Does this idea have merit? If so, what could we do that will produce useful information for the homebrewing community? What condition should we change? Temperature (limited control but we do have three options -- stable at 65, stable at whatever lagering temp we want, or not very stable at room temp in the living space)? Gravity? Nutrient supplements? Aeration? Exposure to light? Something completely different?

FYI I've been homebrewing for about 20 years. I'm an extract brewer. I like IPAs and Belgians mostly. If I'm going to brew the same recipe over and over, it will be an IPA or Belgian.

Thanks!

 

[kombat]

I think designing experiments to track yeast cell mutations across generations is a great idea, but I'd be a little leery of the "home brewing" aspect of it. I can see the school board wanting to distance itself from anything that looks like it's teaching underage kids how to make alcohol.

That said, it could be neat to mix up some starter wort from DME, then keep re-using the same measured amount of yeast over and over across generations, and graphing things like attenuation, fermentation speed, and so on. Maybe illustrate how a refractometer works or a chart showing the changing specific gravity over a period of days, for each generation. Maybe even wash the yeast between each generation and split them up, feeding the most-flocculent cells a fresh batch of wort and comparing their results to the least-flocculent cells. Which ones attenuate faster/further? That sort of stuff.

But I'd leave the word "beer" out of it completely, and any mention of "alcohol" should be in a purely clinical context, almost as an inconvenient byproduct. This is a high school. You're potentially playing with fire here.

 

[hrangil]

Thanks for the reply. I should note that this is an independent experiment. The school district will have nothing to do with it. I know the parents of the my son's friend, and they'll be fully on board. It's all good and I'm not worried about that aspect of it.
What we're most interested in however is mutation. If I do X to one batch and Y to the parallel batch, and keep doing that, how will X mutate differently from Y? What would be the most useful and probably the most valid experiment to conduct, understanding that it will have limited scientific merit given the small sample size (2 batches at a time).
I have two 2.5-gallon carboys and so I can easily split the same wort into two for separate fermentation conditions.
Thanks.