Hola from New Brewer, old yeast Biologist!

Hello out there! I just started my first solo brew and found this forum by "googling" for information on keeping yeast stocks.

I'm a biologist that works on directed evolution of specific yeast proteins in Saccharomyces lab strains, so I have a lot of resources to keep and isolate brewing strains as I begin my hobby.

I just want to say hello, and commend the wonderful search functions and archiving on this site.

Prost!

My first fermentation (of beer):



This is a morebeer brewer's series extract kit of Blind Pig IIPA. My GF picked it out when she bought me my first brew kit, and it's right up my alley.

Welcome. I'm an amateur microbiologist. My wife is the scientist in the house and I'm the one that has flasks, bunson burner, stir plates, microscope, etc at home.

ScoRas said:

This is a morebeer brewer's series extract kit of Blind Pig IIPA. My GF picked it out when she bought me my first brew kit, and it's right up my alley.

Click to expand...

sounds like a smart girl, a keeper!

Bokonon said:

Welcome. I'm an amateur microbiologist. My wife is the scientist in the house and I'm the one that has flasks, bunson burner, stir plates, microscope, etc at home.

Click to expand...

Awesome! I'm the opposite. I worked in biotech for 7 years before coming back to grad school. My main job was developing pilot scale fermentations of Pichia pastoris (fission yeast) for protein expression and purification.

I can't believe it took this long to brew something fun!

My GF is in the same grad program as me, and is definitely the smarter one.

Wow, there are quite a few chaps from Massachusetts signing up on the forums!
Glad to see you here.

Considering your profession I would've expected you to pick up the hobby right off.

Welcome!

Thanks for the warm welcomes everybody!

Racked it to secondary for dry-hopping and oak addition today. I boiled the oak in the hop sock for 15 minutes before adding hops and placing in the secondary carboy. Specific gravity was at 1.019 down from an OG of 1.070.

There was a bit of carbonation and head, so it may still be fermenting a bit. Tasted great, nice and bitter! SWMBO loved it too, as she loves a bitter IPA. I can not wait until this is bottled and conditioned, I could have offed the batch today!

Well, my first homebrew was a smashing success, both me and SWMBO loved the first pull off the tap-a-draft mini keg. It was nicely carbonated in 48 hours with one 16g cartridge, and took a second one to repressurize. I can't wait to drink the bottle-conditioned ones in >3 weeks! It came out to 7.1% ABV. Incidentally, we were RDWHAHB while making our second batch.

Thanks for all the information that led to my first brew being a success. I'm sure that by following revvy's bottling advice, that the bottle-conditioned stuff will be even better than the fresh mini-kegged beer (although the hop blast was worth the greenish beer!)

This will be my last post in this thread, I thought it was a nice place to keep a log of my first brew. Prost!

Wished I would have paid more attention to Biology in High School and less to sports. I think I could have been Big Man on Campus if I had known how to cultivate my own yeast. Not only would I have been friends with the football team, but also the track, basketball, tennis and even the nerds building control panels that could be put to use someday for some really out of this world brew. Buy a guy a fish, you feed him for a day, show him how to brew, and you will make him happy for a lifetime.....