Yeast lab requirements

I could be wrong and if so someone will chime in but yeast growth is a by product of the fermentation process so they just harvest it and use it . Some have members of the staff the check and test it and what ever else they do but I know from homebrewing that it's fairly easy to harvest and use it for your next batch.

 

Some Brewers just order from the established yeast companies such as Wyeast and White Labs. Some breweries have their own Lab, yeast bank, and will propagate from the Yeast bank.

No regulations that I am aware of

 

@sierranevadabill can help answer that.

 

Apparently it depends on the size of the brewery. Turns out I learned from a lab tech at a brewery that sometimes you can use that harvest bit safely for 2-5 generations/batches of beer, but eventually the yeast population changes and only using harvested yeast may impact the flavor profile. So smaller breweries tend to buy a particular strain of yeast as needed for pitching from one of the big commercial labs. Larger breweries may have their own lab where as part of quality control they take steps to preserve the first generation yeast and "grow" enough to be able to provide their own yeast for pitching in successive batches. So apparently there are some breweries that have a proprietary house strain that they preserve and use exclusively. (Lots of the details of how all this is done are beyond my pay grade.)

 

You might get more detailed answers over here: http://www.probrewer.com/

 

This.
We're drinkers. You want to ask this question of a community of industry folks.

 

Top cropping strains can go more generations. A local place is on 90+. There are British breweries the have been reportedly repitching the same yeast for decades

 

Thanks! Longer than I'd been told so helpful to know.