Berkeley Yeast bioengineers the yeast strains that brewers and winemakers already depend on - turning a five-thousand-year-old organism into a precision tool for flavor, consistency, and sustainability.
Every brewery already owns everything it needs to change the flavor of its beer - no new tanks, no new process, just a different packet of yeast. That's the premise Berkeley Yeast was built on.
The Oakland-based company bioengineers strains of brewing yeast, altering the microorganism's internal chemistry so it produces more of the flavors brewers want and less of what they don't. Where a traditional brewery might add fruit puree to get a passionfruit note, or spend years testing yeast batches to chase consistency, Berkeley Yeast engineers that outcome directly into the yeast itself.
The company was founded in 2016 - originally under the name Berkeley Brewing Science - by three scientists trained at UC Berkeley: Charles Denby, Nick Harris, and Rachel Li. Denby, the company's CEO, did his postdoctoral work under Jay Keasling, a UC Berkeley professor known for pioneering work in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. Berkeley Yeast is, in effect, an attempt to move that lab science into a commercial product category that had gone largely unexamined: the yeast packet.
Berkeley Yeast starts with existing, commercially proven yeast strains and introduces targeted genetic changes - adding or adjusting specific genes to influence a strain's metabolic pathways. The result is yeast engineered to do one of a few things especially well: produce more flavor-active compounds, suppress unwanted off-flavors, or change how much alcohol it produces during fermentation.
Engineered for ultra-low diacetyl production, giving brewers cleaner, faster fermentations without the buttery off-flavor that diacetyl can leave behind.
Thiol-boosting strains that generate tropical fruit notes - guava, grapefruit, passionfruit - without adding any actual fruit to the tank.
A flavor series built for hazy and hop-forward beer styles, tuned to interact differently with hop compounds during fermentation.
Maltose- and maltotriose-negative strains that limit alcohol production from the start, aimed at brewers making non-alcoholic beer that still tastes like beer.
The company also offers custom yeast development - designing and licensing bespoke strains for breweries, winemakers, or beverage manufacturers with a specific flavor or performance target in mind.
Non-alcoholic beer has a well-documented problem: most methods for removing alcohol - heating, vacuum distillation, reverse osmosis - also strip out the flavor compounds that make beer taste like beer. Brewers are often left trying to add flavor back in after the fact.
Berkeley Yeast's approach works from the other direction. Its NA strains are bred to be maltose- and maltotriose-negative, meaning they can't metabolize the sugars that would normally produce significant alcohol - while still producing the flavor-active compounds associated with full-strength fermentation. In 2025, the company partnered with Breakside Brewery on a webinar walking brewers through recipe formulation, malt selection, and mashing techniques for NA beer built around this approach.
Traditional yeast suppliers - names like Lallemand, White Labs, and Wyeast - offer catalogs of naturally occurring or selectively bred strains, each with a fixed flavor profile. Brewers choose from what already exists and build recipes around it.
Berkeley Yeast instead treats yeast as a platform that can be adjusted on a reaction-by-reaction basis. Rather than screening for a naturally occurring strain that happens to produce a desired flavor, the company introduces specific genes to push a strain's biochemistry toward a target outcome - more tropical thiols, less diacetyl, less ethanol. That gives brewers a way to order a flavor profile rather than search for one.
Berkeley Yeast runs a hybrid model: direct e-commerce sales of dry yeast packets and liquid pitches to homebrewers and small breweries, alongside custom development and licensing deals with larger commercial producers. The company's site advertises free shipping on dry yeast and larger-format liquid pitches, and its resources section - recipes, brewing guides, brewer interviews - functions as both customer support and a marketing channel to the craft brewing community.
The company sits at the intersection of biotechnology and food and beverage manufacturing, categorized under SIC code 2046 (wet corn milling) and NAICS codes spanning other basic organic chemical manufacturing, biotechnology research, and specialty food manufacturing. That places it alongside precision-fermentation and synthetic-biology companies serving the food industry, even though its most visible customers are craft breweries and winemakers.
In May 2023, Berkeley Yeast closed a $10.47 million Series A round led by Anterra Capital and Finistere Ventures, with participation from Refactor Capital, bringing its total funding to roughly $12.1 million. Earlier funding included grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and US Department of Agriculture - support consistent with the company's roots in federally funded academic research.
| Round | Amount | Date | Lead Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series A | $10.47M | May 2023 | Anterra Capital, Finistere Ventures |
| Grants | Undisclosed | Pre-2023 | NSF, NIH, USDA |
Berkeley Yeast's core technology traces back to research conducted in the lab of Jay Keasling, a UC Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering known for his contributions to synthetic biology. Charles Denby, the company's CEO, completed postdoctoral work under Keasling focused on metabolic engineering before co-founding the company with Nick Harris, a microbiologist, and Rachel Li.
That academic pedigree shapes how the company talks about its own work: less "flavor company," more applied biochemistry. The company has described its approach as changing yeast biochemistry "on a reaction-by-reaction basis" - a level of precision more associated with pharmaceutical bioengineering than with brewing supply catalogs.
Charles Denby, Nick Harris, and Rachel Li found the company, building on synthetic biology research from UC Berkeley.
The company rebrands and begins developing and selling bioengineered yeast strains to brewers.
Berkeley Yeast raises $10.47M led by Anterra Capital and Finistere Ventures, bringing total funding to $12.1M.
Partners with Breakside Brewery on a webinar covering brewing techniques for NA beer using Berkeley Yeast strains.
Releases "Topper" and "Dumpster Fire" collaboration beers as part of SF Beer Week programming.
Berkeley Yeast's customer base spans two ends of the brewing world. On one end, homebrewers and small operations buy single dry-yeast packets directly through the company's online store. On the other, commercial breweries purchase 5-plus barrel liquid pitches for full production runs. The company's brewer resources section references collaborations with breweries including Almanac Beer Co., and its 2026 SF Beer Week entries were produced in partnership with fellow brewers under the names "Topper" and "Dumpster Fire."
Winemakers and other fermented-beverage producers represent a smaller but stated part of the customer base, reflecting the company's broader positioning around fermentation science rather than beer exclusively.
It bioengineers specialized strains of brewing yeast that give beer, wine, and other fermented beverages new flavors, better consistency, and lower resource use.
Charles Denby, Nick Harris, and Rachel Li, three UC Berkeley PhDs, founded the company in 2016, building on synthetic biology research from Jay Keasling's lab.
The company introduces or modifies genes in existing commercial yeast strains to change specific metabolic pathways, boosting desirable flavor compounds or limiting undesirable ones.
Craft breweries, winemakers, and homebrewers, ranging from single dry-yeast packets to commercial liquid pitches for large-batch fermentation.
The company has raised a total of roughly $12.1M, including a $10.47M Series A round in May 2023 led by Anterra Capital and Finistere Ventures.