Yeast......OK, I know.......yeast is boring. However, it's one of the 'magic' ingredients to beer. Without it, beer would be non-alcoholic, very sweet...and boring. So this weekend, I took a trip out to Wyeast labs near Hood River, Oregon to pay them a visit. This is one of the major yeast facilities in the USA. I actually use their product every single time I brew beer. They have these great things called 'smack packs'. It's a package that has your yeast and a small amount of sweet beer (inside another little packet). When you are ready to pitch your yeast into your brew, you 'smack' the pack to mix the yeast and sweet beer together. A few hours later, the smack pack expands from the CO2 being generated. This means that your yeast is good and you can toss it into your beer. It's wonderful! Back in the day, only dry yeast was available (like the kind bakers use). You would never know if the yeast was good or not and often times the strain of yeast was inconsistent. Yeast plays a major role in the final taste of beer. You can brew 2 batches of the same beer with different yeast and get two totally different tasting beers.

Back to the tour...Wyeast is located in the middle of the burbs..yep, there are houses next door and people pushing their babies in strollers. I have to admit, the facility wasn't the biggest and brightest thing I have ever seen. I guess I was expecting to drive over a green hill and in the distance Wyeast would be shimmering under the soft glow of a rainbow....Not quite. But then again...it's Yeast.....boring. The QA Manager gave me a tour of the facility. He had a few microscopes set up so that I could see 'healthy yeast' and "yeast gone wild!". The healthy yeast was round, oval, and happy. The infected yeast had string-like bacteria floating around, looking evil, and laughing at me. I wasn't allowed to see the packaging line....confidentiality stuff (and I was planning to set up a yeast facility in my closet! Darn!). However...after the lab tour, we did go upstairs where they had a stainless steel 2 tap kegerator set up! Glorious! If I worked there, how would I ever get anything done! We sipped a few pints and chatted about ... yeast. In the end, it was good to see the facility where 'yeast' is born....but it did live up to its name...yeast is boring!