randy_byers | At last, the truth about Redhook yeast revealed!

Yesterday I went to the Elysian Brewpub to have a Bifröst Winter Ale before heading to the Paramount for the screening of Diary of a Lost Girl (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, 1929). I had been hoping to finish reading Angela Carter's retelling of the Bluebeard story, "The Bloody Chamber," but I ended up talking to the Elysian's manager, Greg, about the light rail and other Seattle developments instead. When I got the chance to have a word with the Elysian's brewer, Dick, I leapt at the chance to ask him about the original Redhook yeast.

Dick said that they didn't know what they were doing and allowed the standard yeast they began with to become infected. Infected by what, I wanted to know. Was it wild yeast? Could have been any number of things, he said. Yeast is susceptible to bacterial infection too.

It's still not clear to me how it happened exactly. Dick confirmed what others said in the comments to my previous post on this subject, that yeast is highly susceptible to change, and he said that he'll use a given batch of yeast only twenty or thirty times before going back to the yeast bank (I think he called it) and ordering a fresh batch. I'm not sure if Redhook just kept using the same yeast for too long, or if it got infected right away. I also asked him if he used local yeasts for his Belgian-style beers, and he said no, he gets Belgian yeasts from the yeast bank. I didn't ask him how the yeast bank keeps the strains stable. Now I wonder what Redhook used when they tried to recreate the original Redhook a few years later. Did they still have some of the infected yeast around? Somehow I don't think I'm ever going to get to the bottom of this story.

Later, as I sat in the Paramount wondering why

akirlu and

libertango hadn't shown up (turns out they were stuck in Redmond because of terrible traffic due to traffic lights being out), who should wander down the aisle but Dick. "I should have known this was where you were going," he said. Indeed, he and I used to talk movies all the time when I was a regular at the Elysian. It was a gorgeous print of the movie, too, although I prefer the other movie Louise Brooks made in Germany with G.W. Pabst, Pandora's Box. But it was fun to see it on the big screen with a crowd of several hundred yeasty, hoppy souls.