After over a four-year hiatus from brewing, my life has settled down enough to consider brewing again on a limited scale. For those who have yet to learn, I suffered a heart attack and had to undergo coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery in 2016. Having one’s chest cracked open is not something that I would recommend to anyone. I also separated from my now ex-wife the same year. I did not just vanish from the face of the earth. Those who know me more closely on this forum knew what was up. Coming back from open-heart surgery and divorce in the second half of one’s fifties takes a toll on a human being. I also had to give up my old user name in 2016, which is why many of you who have read my old posts due not recognize my user name.
I have been watching people quote my old posts from afar during the last four years. I remember the amount of push-back I received when I first posted my quick-and-easy (Shaken, not Stirred) method for making and pitching a starter. To see it become a mainstream yeast propagation technique within the amateur brewing community has been both rewarding and humbling. Hopefully, I can once again add value to the community, but it may be slow in coming because I gave away or sold everything over the last four years thinking that I would not return to brewing.
Glad you’re back! I learned a lot from your posts about yeast over the years and I still swear by the shaken not stirred method. I hope you find some enjoyment with brewing again.
One thing that has burst upon the scene during your absence is the yeast genome studies and the related relationship tree. I’ve often wondered what your thoughts are on the resulting linking/delinking of some beliefs of yeast origin.
Glad to have you back, Mark. I am just getting back into it myself after a few years of minimal brewing. Life gets in the way, and you have to focus on the important stuff. It is good to see you contribute here again. I wish you much health and happiness!
That data is not all that new. I had been working with earlier genomic work that covered a wider scope of yeast strains than are covered on that page before I took my hiatus, but it does appear that further research on brewing-specific yeast strains has been performed. Does anyone recall that I stated that Wyeast 1056 (BRY-96) was a diploid yeast strain, which is unique when it comes to brewing? That information was published in several earlier studies. There is also data out there that reveals that strains that have been used for lager brewing are taxonomically Saccharomyces cerevisiae (S. cerevisiae), not Saccharomyces pastorianus (S. pastorianus) and vice versa. We are learning a lot about brewing yeast genetics, especially with respect to origin. The interesting thing to think about is that Pacman and BRY96 are in the same family. Is that due to mitosis-based mutation or is it due to meiosis-based hybridization due to the fact that BRY96 is a diploid; therefore, it can under meoisis (sexual reproduction)?
As an aside, one thing that I have noticed since taking up sourdough baking is that there are lot of wild yeast strains that will ferment at 40F. I hope to eventually plate out and test a few of the yeast strains in my sourdough culture. There is a potpourri of yeast strains in the average sourdough culture, not all of which belong to the S. cerevisiae genus.
I appreciate being included in your book. It was humbling. Brewing is like the song “Hotel California” in that one can check out, but one can never really leave. It is amazing to see what has transpired in the hobby over the last 27+ years. Home-brewing was a cottage industry when I first started to brew. It was a quirky monk squad-like activity where all-grain brewers had to have DIY skills because there was no commercially available all-grain equipment. I got into yeast culturing because Wyeast was the main liquid yeast producer and their catalog was quite small. Plus, it was difficult to get Wyeast cultures on the East Coast when the weather started to get warmer. No one who was serious about brewing used dry yeast because the quality of dry yeast was so poor. BrewTek mini slants were a life saver. I shared a Ringwood culture that I copped and plated from a hydrometer sample at the Alan Pugsley-built Wild Goose Brewery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and shared it with Jeff and Maribeth. I am fairly certain that that slanted culture is in at least one of the major yeast propagaters’ bank.
