Stone Highlights Their Yeast Strains (Part 1)

Here’s some interesting yeast “science” from Randy Clemens @ Stone:

Y’know… it seems like hops get a heck of a lot of attention for their delightfully flavorful contributions to our awesome beers. Rightly deserved, but there’s a little unsung hero that we feel is finally due some credit: our yeast strain.

To tell the truth, my favorite part of putting together our book—The Craft of Stone Brewing Co.: Liquid Lore, Epic Recipes, and Unabashed Arrogance—with Steve and Greg was getting the low-down on where the Stone yeast strain came from. You see, when a mommy and daddy yeast cell love each other very much… no, not really. (They don’t even get to have that much fun; yeast cells reproduce asexually through a process called budding… but I digress.) Our yeast’s ultimate origins were told to me by Steve, and I laughed my ass off when he told me the story. From the aforementioned book, I quoteth:

We got our yeast strain from a now defunct Canadian microbrewery. A brewery in the Northwest U.S. (that shall remain
nameless) was using it when I was living up that way and I really liked its properties—I thought it would be a great fit for the beers Greg and I had talked about making.

When we first moved down to San Diego, we brewed a few test batches with some yeast that Pizza Port let us have, but when it was time to get our own yeast strain going, I had my friend Jeff fly down with a batch of it from Oregon.

So, there he was at the airport with this huge keg filled with liquid yeast. He was checking it as luggage, and the attendant told him it was over the weight limit. So, he wheeled the keg into a stall in the men’s bathroom, attached the fittings, and drained some of the yeast out. It wasn’t a clean job though; the yeast had sprayed on the walls and around the seat and pretty much everywhere. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a liquid yeast culture, but it’s not a pretty shade of brown. And, considering the fact that it was splattered over a large portion of a bathroom stall, I guarantee the poor janitor that discovered it didn’t think it was yeast that made that Jackson Pollock.

So, unsung hero of the custodial arts, if you’re out there reading this, please take it as our sincerest apology, and know that your work was not in vain! Our keg ended up under the weight limit and made it to San Diego safely, rolling down the baggage claim conveyor to scores of laughter and applause. Its contents have served us—not to mention countless fans—quite well ever since. We owe you a beer!

Yes, it did make it here safely. And we do use it. But where is it kept? How is it stored? How do we make more? For these questions, I took a 25-minute drive south to see our friends at yeast mecca White Labs to find out. If you’re a homebrewer, you’re no stranger to the name White Labs, since they (along with Wyeast Laboratories) are responsible for a large majority of homebrewing yeast cultures out on the market. But they also perform a large number of services for breweries and wineries across the world, including many analytical tests and the ever-so-important banking of proprietary yeast strains.