Glad you are back! We missed ya!
I missed the camaraderie displayed on this forum. It is a very “chill” forum compared to other brewing forums. The other forum to which I used to post, Jim’s Beer Kit, is kind of like a British equivalent of the AHA forum in that respect.
What I like about the AHA forum and Jim’s Beer Kit that everyone appears to be open to new ideas. I will may take a little persuasion, but most people will give a new idea a shot. Not having to feel defensive all the time when posting allows one to take in new ideas and knowledge. The last four years were not my first multi-year hiatus from the hobby. I took an eight-year hiatus while raising my children. I did not think that I would come back to brewing, so I dispensed with the brewhouse and labware I had at the time (which was significantly less than the gear and labware that I let go during the last four years); however, as I mentioned, brewing is like the song “Hotel California,” one can check out, but one can never truly leave. I remember a sales person asking a new homebrewer if he planned to batch or fly sparge the first time I re-entered a homebrewing supplier that I have been using since early 1993 after my first hiatus. Batch sparging, what the heck is that? At first, I was certain that it would not work as well as continuous sparging, but I was wrong. To my chagrin, Denny returned the favor. SNS was not a slam dunk with him, but he gave it a shot and realized that he was working harder than he needed to work. That is one thing that I truly admire about Denny. He is constantly in search of brewing the best beer while using the simplest process.
Learning from others is arguably the best use of one’s time. Confirming with your own experience could be the second best use of one’s time. Humility and open-mindedness are wonderful human traits, as well…I find those here a lot. Cheers, homebrewers!
Well dang, Mark, it’s great to see your return.
+1 Though we’ve had our moments (I’m looking in the mirror), I often go to other forums and forget where I am. It doesn’t take long be be snapped back to reality. …and not just brewing forums. You might not be surprised but there are some real jack wagons out there. I heard on the news some lady in a knitting circle committed suicide because of hell she caught in a forum for having the ‘wrong’ position on a topic. Crazy stuff.
You figure a forum of like minded folks congregate to ask and answer questions, and carry on thought experiments would be a friendly environment, but some are down right nasty to a newcomer asking a question. …and not shy about berating a newb for ‘not doing your homework’ or ‘research’ before asking, either. They eat there young. I laugh because without the new blood consistently regenerating from the bottom the top will simply die off and the forum will collapse.
My first experience with online brewing conversations was on rec.crafts.brewing, which was a USENET group. That was when I first started to brew. I am almost absolutely certain that James Liddil was almost single-handedly responsible for introducing the magnetic stir plate to the homebrewing community, but he was dealing with difficult to culture microflora. Jim was the first person I know of who attempted to rescue wild yeast and bugs from bottles of Lambic. Brewers today have no idea as to how primitive things were during the first big growth spurt of the hobby.
To answer BrewBama’s question as to how I feel about dry yeast, all I can say is that the dry yeast that is being produced today is light years better than what was available when I entered the hobby in early 1993. However, I rarely used dry yeast before I took my latest hiatus because yeast culturing was always a big part of the hobby for me. What started out as a necessity due to the fact Wyeast smack packs were difficult to get on the East Cost turned into a companion hobby. We have to remember that White labs did not exist in 1993. I started by culturing BRY-96 from a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I started the dregs from a bottle in a small amount of 1.020 wort. I then plated the starter after it started for “singles.” The healthiest well-isolated colonies were transferred to slant. I was able to successfully culture a few other brewery yeast strains before I encountered a BrewTek advertisement in Brewing Techniques. BrewTek was a fantastic resource for the yeast culturing brewer. What a lot of people do not know is that Wyeast 1450 was originally a BrewTek culture known as CL-50 California Pub Brewery Ale. Denny managed to keep the culture alive until Wyeast picked it up. That is why the yeast culture is known as “Denny’s Favorite 50.” The “50” is for CL-50. I maintained a handful BrewTek cultures for a decade before I took my first hiatus from brewing. What I am led to believe is that the early BrewTek cultures came from the Maltose Falcon’s yeast bank. Maribeth Raines, the scientist behind BrewTek, was a Falcon. The source of CL-50 has never been disclosed, but my bet is on it being North Coast’s house strain, which Mark Ruedrich acquired from UC Davis.
Interesting history.
Was and still is. We have some yeast storage info from her coming up on the next podcast.
I remember rec.crafts.brewing. It was a very important resource to me way back when I started this. Forums are so much easier to use than USENET was.
I have no interest in today’s “social media” environment (I really struggled with that adjective 
). Too many years in software security work to ever consider those sites safe in any way. It’s also a bit of “git off my lawn” mentality, I’m sure.
Glad to see you back on the forum and looking forward to more insights and learning from your experience!
Paul
I will have to check that one out. It is amazing how much impact Maribeth and the Falcons made on amateur brewing. She taught an entire generation of brewers how to collect and manage yeast cultures. The number of yeast cultures available to the amateur brewing community exploded after she put together her yeast culturing book and kit. I learned how to pour almost condensation-free plates from Maribeth.
Listened. When I hit your link, a picture of a Drewry beer add came up. My dad used to drink that brand for a while.
I used to keep master and working slants, but I found that I was not using the working slants before it was time to subculture the master, so I started to subculture a new master followed by inoculating 40ml of autoclaved 1.020 wort as the first step in making a starter. I usually step at a rate of 25-to-1, 40ml to 1L, but my 40ml first level starter is inoculated using ascetic technique with absolutely sterile wort.
By the way, my 40ml starter is also an SNS starter.
I have my own amusing batch gone bad story to add Denny’s and Drew’s from the podcast. It was my third batch. I made it using a Bruce’s Dogbolter Kit. I am fairly certain that that kit beer was made by EDME. I did the partial boil followed by topping off with boiled and cooled water thing before pitching EDME dry yeast. To say that EDME dry yeast was dreadful is being kind. That beer ended up having a potato chip-like aftertaste and was affectionately known in local circles as the potato chip beer. That fermentation gone bad was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I brewed my fourth beer using yeast I cultured from the bottom of a bottle of SNPA. The first sip of my fourth beer was a lightbulb moment. My experiences with dry yeast in the bad old days is why I still cringe at the thought of pitching dry yeast even though I know that dry yeast has come a long way.
In today’s market, that might be a huge hit. [emoji23]
I brewed that kit in my first year of brewing. I was so new I didn’t realize how bad it was until I’d brewed a few more batches and could compare
Dogbolter Bitter was my first or second batch, back in 1990. About 10 years ago, I had a taste of that kit at a homebrew store and was surprised at how strikingly similar I remembered the flavor.
I was thinking about you as I was composing that post because your house yeast is Lallemand BRY-97. That is about the only dry yeast strain that I really like. It is a nice strain once it starts fermenting. It clears beautifully. Another strain that I love has apparently been available dry for quite some time; namely, 34/70. At this point, I am almost certain that that strain was sold as BrewTek CL-660 N. German Lager (maybe, I can get it re-labled as “Mark’s Favorite 660” :). If I am correct, 34/70 is the most forgiving lager strain I have ever used. It was my house strain in my first brew house. I used to primary it in the low 60s high 50s in my basement without artificial attemperation. At that temperature, it produced beautiful lagers that tasted like lagers.
Yeah, I’ve used 34/70 for both ales and lagers and they all came out well. BTW, I was against calling it Denny’s Favorite, but I didn’t get a say in the matter. I was pushing for Noti Pub Ale, in keeping with the original name.
It does not matter what Wyeast labeled the strain. You did a service to the community by keeping the culture alive. What I would not give for an hour with Maribeth to discuss the origins of the BrewTek strains. She will probably take that information to her grave. 