Will kveik continue to evolve outside of Norway?

[shoreman]

Was wondering if you think that kveik will continue to evolve outside of Norway? Seems that the homebrew community around the world and some yeast labs have taken a serious liking to kveik.

From what I read in Lars’ book, the reason kveik evolved so well over the years was it was hand selected for traits batch to batch. A sour batch and the yeast got tossed and you got a new pitch from a neighbor. That happened over generations (of brewers) and helped its success.

Breweries, homebrewers and yeast labs these days are fairly stable and sterile environments. I know some labs have been pulling strains out and isolating.

Will these kveiks continue to evolve naturally? I wonder also if anyone has been going 20-30-40 batches on a single kveik and seen changes?

 

[VikeMan]

The answer is, yes, of course it will evolve. Unless the yeast is banked/frozen in large qtys and every new batch is propagated directly from that bank, there's going to be genetic drift. It's the reason we have about 5 or 6 (maybe more...I've lost track) unique "Chico" strains these days.