With the slogan, “highest cell count in the industry”, you might not immediately guess that Inland Island Yeast Laboratories is actually one of the most important companies supporting the brewing industry. I had the pleasure of talking with Matthew Peetz, one of the two Inland Island owners, and learned all about the essentials of high-quality yeast for a high-quality brew.
Inland Island Yeast Labs started in 2014, cultivating yeast in a spare bathtub, just to see what would happen to the cells. With a background in cell biology, Matthew has always been interested in fermentable goods and with figuring out the story behind each strain’s unique flavors. While Inland Island began marketing to homebrewers, once their first partner brewery, Joyride Brewing, signed on, the secret got out. Now, the majority of Denver and Metro Denver Breweries get at least some of their yeast from Inland Island. One of the reasons Inland Island has become so popular is that yeast must be shipped same day, making it particularly expensive for brewers. Finding an operation that’s not only local but also is impeccably good at cultivating and marketing its product; it’s a dream come true.
Matthew is somewhat of an expert in the history of yeast, so the start of our conversation took us back a few hundred years. Humans have been fermenting food and beverages for centuries, as soon as they learned that anything over 5% alcohol wouldn’t allow pathogens to live (and, not to mention, the effects of alcohol). Humans quickly figured out that yeast could be cultivated and re-used from any unpasteurized fermented beverage. In fact, one of the most interesting tidbits I learned from my conversation with Matthew was that all lager yeast comes from the same original yeast colony, started in Germany in the 1880s. Other countries soon caught on, and Ale and Belgian yeast also all have ties to only a few original sources in Europe. Yeast has a deep history throughout the world, and Inland Island has figured out how to cultivate it in a way that allows brewers to continue to find new flavors and combinations while maintaining historical roots.
Yeast is one of the most vital components of any great beer. Not only is the yeast what allows the wort to become alcoholic, and thus become beer, but yeast is also what gives different styles of beer their unique and distinctive flavors. Have you ever had a Belgian style beer, and tasted that banana and spice flavor? A lot of that flavor profile comes from the yeast used in fermentation! You really can’t make a Belgian taste like a Belgian without using Belgian yeast. Another example Matthew gave that underscores the importance of using the right yeast for the right brew is the process of making a Kölsch style beer. Most beer drinkers know that a traditional Kölsch style is a crystal clear beer. However, the Kölsch strain of yeast makes beer particularly hazy. During our discussion, I learned that adding in a strain of California Ale yeast clears the beer right up, making it look like your traditional Kölsch.
So where does the original yeast come from? Usually, it comes from other beers or previous strains that have been morphed by growers overtime. Matthew described that a small amount of yeast lives at the end of any unfiltered beer. You can cultivate yeast from any unfiltered beer by pouring the very bottom of the beer into a petri dish and letting it grow. Matthew shared that several brewers come to Inland Island with some of their favorite rare and interesting beers from all over the world and will ask the Inland Island team to cultivate the yeast from that beer. Once there is enough yeast for a brew batch, the brewery makes their own concoction with it. Often, they report back to the Inland Island team about what flavors developed, and if they liked the brew, how they might replicate that yeast strain and continue to use it. It’s all about combining ideas, flavors, and molecule structures to see how they interact.
Yeast strains are like any other fruit, vegetable, herb, or bread starter. They have been cultivated from an heirloom variety, and then changed and morphed over time as different strains are added together, or as one particularly powerful strain continues to be cultivated and used in more brews. The Inland Island folks have over 200 different yeast strains in storage, just waiting to be used in different beer experiments. They even have a few strains that no other company has, really setting them apart from the pack.
The last piece of the puzzle is understanding what form of yeast will give you the best tasting brew. You may have seen yeast at your local grocery store, you know, the bright yellow Fleischmann’s packets. That’s what is known as dry yeast. While it may work for homemade pizza dough, it’s not the best for brewing. While not all yeast varieties can be dried, those that can still aren’t as flavorful as yeast in liquid form. When yeast is dried, a good portion of it dies, meaning that a lot of the flavor is lost and isn’t transferred to the product you’re fermenting. Not only that but if you leave dead yeast in a fermenting beer it can autolyze (meaning the yeast cells rupture) and cause a meaty, cheesy taste to the beer. I don’t know about you, but when I think beer, I typically don’t think ‘meat and cheese’. On the other hand, liquid yeast packs a punch and brings ever changing and evolving flavor to the beer you love. Keeping yeast in liquid form also ensures that it stays alive and active so that when you being fermentation the yeast is ready to eat up all the delicious sugars in your beer wort.
Overall, I’d say this was one of the more interesting and in-depth conversations I’ve had about beer and the beer making process. From what Matthew tells me, it sounds like we will see a good share of pastry stouts coming up as well as some interesting flavor combinations with yeast cultivation from rare world beers. Unfortunately, you can’t tour Inland Island, but I would absolutely suggest checking out their products in various homebrew shops around Denver, especially if you’re thinking about making your own brew. Inland Island is really making a name for themselves after only four years of being open and based on how knowledgeable Matthew was during our conversation and how popular Inland Island products have become with brewers, I don’t see them going anywhere anytime soon!