Yeast – a friend, a brother and a mate

We have already talked about hops and malt. Another important ingredient in beer is yeast. It is not right to name yeast simply an ingredient. Unlike the other stuff, yeast is a living organism that does its things in wort. Thus, it is more of a partner than an ingredient. Now, Estonian legislation does not allow putting the yeast as a board member. If that cannot be done, then yeast has to be treated with great respect in other ways. It has to be taken care that it is not too warm or cold for the yeast. The room has to be clean with sufficient oxygen. There has to be enough to eat and drink, so that the food is tasty for gentlemen. In return, the yeast turns a barrel full of wort into delicious and tasty beer. In addition to turning sugars into beer, the yeast leaves its soul and character into the beer, which the beer drinker can find for his pleasure. This is a good result. Nevertheless, it is not quite alone. About 90 trillion yeast cells are working in order to make 1 000-liter batch. It is 90 with 12 zeroes or 90 000 000 000 000.

A brewer’s yeast is in the picture – Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It is about 3 000-fold magnification taken with a scanning electron microscope (SEM).