Yeast by Yeastwest

Believe it or not, I like some Fungi. For example: Toad...you know, Toad, from Mario Brothers. He seems like a pretty stand up fellow with just right mix of respect for others and a bit of moxy to balance him out. He would be one of the few Fungus/Fungi that I'd seriously consider you know..."Good People."

But I got to say, most other Fungi (e.g. mushrooms, in all their scary disgusting varieties) just don't do it for me.

There is one very big glearing exception. I have a big soft spot in my heart for YEAST. Yeast really is the giver of just so much great. All it asks for is a little food to munch on and in return it gives us some of the most delicious things on the planet. Breads and other baked goods, while may be less in fashion lately (damn you Atkins for telling us carbs are bad), are nonetheless, undeniably delicious.

ALSO without yeast, we just wouldn't have beer, whiskey, gin, wine, and all the other alcohols to pleasure our mouths and entertain our souls.

But with all my respect for these bazillions of alcohol creating magicians, they sure have been kicking my butt lately.

Let me tell you the painful Belgium Ale story...

I pick up all of our ingredients for our very first Belgium style ale. The grand vision is to craft a Chimay White style, belgium white with some great hints of Orange. My choice of yeast to use, is what is said to be the same used by the Chimay monks in their monastry. They even label the yeast "Trappist" yeast.

All going according to plan, we set out thursday morning to get our brew on....all preperations have been made. I pull the yeast out of the fridge and what do I see....THEY GAVE ME THE WRONG YEAST! ZOMG, WTFBBQ, or any other of your other fav trite internetisms. Shat~ To make things worse, they are closed of all days...THAT DAY (thur) for an annual inventory.

We thought long and hard about using the yeast they gave us. It was the type used to create a Belgium Wit Ale (Wit meaning "Wheat"). This is the type of used if we watned to do a Belgium style Hefeweizen. But this beer has no wheat. What would it taste like using this strain of yeast? Good, not so good, great, terrible? Lots of thought went into our options and the best path of action.

In the end we decided: Let's do it the way we originally wanted to. That means, getting the right yeast.

Looks we will have to reschedule brewing to Sat. Oh well, patience is the key to good beer. I get it, I geeet it. I head over to the brewery store on Friday (they are finally open) and make the neccesary exchange. All is well in Nijikai town....right?

Uh-oh PROBLEM TWO: Saturday rolls around and I notice ANOTHER thing wrong

with our yeast. It is.....EXPIRED. That's right. I really should start paying very detailed attention to everything I buy.

It is only over by a couple weeks. But still!! I checked with White Labs yeast compay's website and they say it might be still viable, but its risky. I check there is alive yeast in the bottle by shaking it, there is some...but jeebus only knows how many viable cells are still around.

I have since learned the right thing to do would have been to make a yeast starter (more on this later as it will be something I will be adding to our brewing) to grow lots more yeast cells and ensure it would be ok.

But what did I do?? I threw it in the cooled wort and prayed for the best. Will it be enough to make the beer? Will there be repercussions or other issues from this issue. Time will tell. Man it makes it hard to sleep at night.