Yakima Brewing & Malting Co. was the brainchild of Scottish-born Bert Grant, a career brewer with a taste for hoppy ales. During a long career with several major North American brewing companies (including Stroh and Carling O’Keefe), Grant harbored a dream: to build his own small brewery.
In 1982 he did just that, opening the first microbrewery in Washington state in the old Yakima Opera House. Since then, Grant has expanded his operations considerably. The company completed construction of a new 12,000-barrel brewery (that can expand as demand warrants) in 1991 and operates a brewpub in a former Yakima railway depot.
Grant has an affection for hoppy, British-style ales and brews a full range of them, including Grant’s Scottish Ale, Russian Imperial Stout, India Pale Ale, Grant’s Celtic Ale, and occasional seasonals. The company also produces cask-conditioned ales for pouring in the brewpub and at select retail establishments in the Seattle area.
Grant’s Celtic Ale
Ostensibly based on the mild ales of the British Isles, Grant’s Celtic Ale has that style’s light body but a more generous helping of hops. It is a true session beer, with an alcohol content of under 3 percent by volume. This ale is a dark, rich-looking brew with a spicy aroma and pleasing bitterness. Whatever it owes to its mild ale predecessors, it is one of those uniquely American beers that takes the best of Old World brewing traditions and transforms them into something entirely new.
Grant’s ales have become widely available, even as far as the East Coast. Unusual among microbrewers, Grant has a pasteurizer, which helps give his ales the shelf stability that many microbrews lack.
See ALE and MICROBREWERY.
A 3-foot-long, horn-shaped drinking glass that holds about a quart (0.9L) of beer. A yard of ale usually has a long fluted neck and sits on some sort of a globular bottom, although shapes and stands vary. Half-yards also are available.
A relatively large single-celled fungus requiring 1,000 to 2,000 cells laid end to end to make a string 0.39 inch (1 cm) long. Yeasts reproduce by budding, also known as binary fission or cell division. The mother cell produces a daughter cell that can grow to the size of the mother in 2 to 6 hours. Yeasts are widely distributed in nature, passing the winter in the soil. In spring, wind and other natural agents spread them far and wide. Yeasts have the ability to convert sugars into alcohol and various by-products (such as esters and diacetyl). They are classified by genus, species, and strain. The main genus used by brewers is Saccharomyces, and the species primarily used in beer are cerevisiae for ales and uvarum (also known as carlsbergensis,) for lagers. Although some texts claim that yeasts used for wheat beer are delbruckii, they are actually cerevisiae. The different strains are identified by various attributes in their fermentation. These attributes are usually based on growth rate, temperature tolerance, attenuation, and, most importantly the flavors they impart (or do not impart) to beer. The brewer must weigh these factors when selecting the proper strain of yeast to use for the style of beer being made.
The exact function of yeasts was entirely unknown until the 19th century. In the years 1837–38, separate publications by C. Cagniard de la Tour, T. Schwann, and F. Kützing indicated that the scientists had discovered that yeast was a living organism that reproduced through a process of budding. Schwann named it Zuckerpilz, which means “sugar fungus.” Saccharomyces is derived from this genus, which includes baker’s and brewer’s yeasts.
Skimming the yeast
It was not until 1876, when Louis Pasteur summarized fermentation as “life without air,” that the exact role yeasts play in the fermentation process was discovered. Pasteur found that yeasts given an ample amount of air did not produce nearly the amount of alcohol as when the air was suppressed. He also noted that in highly aerated wort, yeasts grew more rapidly and were able to absorb into their cells a far greater proportion of the transformed sugars. In wort without air, the growth rate slowed considerably, but production of alcohol increased dramatically.
When yeasts have an abundance of the correct nutrients and an abundance of oxygen, they reproduce through the process of budding. The mother cell forms a lateral protrusion or extension, passing essential cell materials to the daughter cell. Once enough material is passed to the new cell, it is sealed off from the mother cell and begins its own independent life. Some yeasts will produce spores, much like mushroom fungi, which contain half the chromosomes of the parent yeast. When the spore mates with a compatible spore type, the two will eventually grow into a new yeast strain. Yeasts that are capable of this sexual cycle are called perfect yeasts. For the most part, beer yeasts are imperfect and have lost the ability to form spores. This is important to the brewer in that the chances of a new strain of yeast appearing via spores in a fermenting beer and imparting off-flavors are nil.
Depending on the strain of yeast, the temperature range at which it best ferments is quite narrow. One out of a million yeast cells will spontaneously mutate into something other than the original strain. If the pH, temperature, or nutrients are not within the parameters preferred by a particular yeast, the mutation rate will increase dramatically and will most likely ruin the beer with off-flavors.
As long as the yeasts have fermentable sugars to consume, they remain in suspension. When the fermentable sugars have all been used up, the yeasts enter the stationary phase. They begin to form clumps, called flocs, and settle to the bottom of the fermenter. This is called flocculation. How well a particular strain does this depends on several factors. The genetic makeup of the yeast, the available nutrients, and the environment all influence how well or poorly a yeast will flocculate. Certain strains of yeast will not flocculate much, but will settle down to a powdery, easily disturbed layer of yeast. Other strains will group together and create a layer on the bottom of the fermenter that is difficult to remove.
See FERMENTATION and YEAST NUTRIENTS.
The nutrients needed for yeast to reproduce and ferment properly. Oxygen and nitrogen are also needed for yeast reproduction and fermentation. Adequate aeration of the wort will provide the oxygen that is required, and ammonium ions, amino acids, and polypeptides that are found in the wort will provide the nitrogen that is required.
Soluble proteins are absorbed and broken down into amino acids in the mash. These amino acids are subsequently consumed by the yeast. Substantial quantities of phosphate and sulfate are also needed for proper yeast growth, as are trace amounts of calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, and sulfur.
During brewing, if the fermenting beer lacks the nutrients that are needed, the fermentation process will be shortened and it will leave behind fermentable sugars. As the nutrients run out, the yeast will begin to enter a self-preservation stage during which it activates certain enzymes that reduce the yeast cell to amino acids and other substances. These substances will then settle out of solution. The beer needs to be removed from the yeast before the yeast cells begin to feed on themselves (autolysis) which would impart off-flavors to the beer. Autolysis is abnormal, however, and should not be a major concern for most brewers.
See AERATION, FERMENTAION, and YEAST.
A sheet press where entrained beer (barm) is recovered and blended back with racked beer. In large breweries where yeast is removed from open-top fermenting vessels by suction, it is normally sent down to a holding tank. The yeast is normally pumped from this tank to the press. Sometimes yeast is stored in the press, which is kept cool. Otherwise it is discharged into another storage container.
See BARM.
A tank designed for efficient, sterile yeast growth. The setup generally includes a holding/growth vessel, a wort-sterilizing vessel, and a sterile air facility.
To effect infection-free propagation, the yeast cultures must be inoculated with sterile wort. Growth is then promoted by the injection of sterile air into the growth medium. In essence, the propagation is a miniature version of a closed, sanitary fermentation vessel. Many designs and methods are available to accomplish this.
A pump used for skimming yeast off the top of an open-top fermentation vessel and guiding it down into a receiving container.
The Yorkshire Stone Square at the Samuel Smith Brewery in Yorkshire, England
A type of fermentation vessel originally made of stone and later of slate, but now made of stainless steel. The Yorkshire Stone Square has a lower compartment that is separated from the open upper area by a deck, which allows entry to the lower vessel by a series of pipes and a central manhole. The lower compartment contains wort and yeast. As the yeast head grows, it rises up through the manhole and onto the deck. The beer then drains back through the pipes. This system is used with highly flocculent yeasts that require vigorous aeration. At the end of fermentation, the yeast is recovered by skimming it off the deck. Samuel Smith’s Brewery in England is noted for using this fermentation system.
D. G. Yuengling & Son Brewing Co. is a brewery with a notable distinction: It is the oldest continuously operating brewery in the United States, founded in 1829.
The first Yuengling to arrive in Pottsville was a young German immigrant named David Gottlob Yuengling, a brewer by trade. His first operation was called the Eagle Brewery, but it was destroyed by fire in 1831. Undeterred, Yuengling rebuilt on a hillside overlooking Pottsville, and the brewery has remained there ever since. After the move, the name was changed to the Yuengling Brewery, but the firm kept the eagle as its trademark.
The brewery was positioned on a hillside for a good reason. The nascent art of lager brewing required cool temperatures to ferment and age the beer, and in those prerefrigeration days, it was necessary to dig cellars deep into the earth. In these cool chambers, generations of Yuenglings aged their beers.
In the early days, Yuengling was a draught-only brewery. The beer was put into barrels and transported by horse-drawn wagons to the taverns where it was sold.
The Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, 1843
When Prohibition came, strict limits were put on how many tanks a brewery could have. Yuengling sealed off some of its underground chambers with brickwork to comply. (Yuengling unsealed the cellars in 1976 and put the bottles and papers found there in an on-premises museum.) During the 14 years of Prohibition, the company made Yuengling Special, a nonalcoholic brew. The company also diversified into ice cream, operating an ice cream factory right up to the 1980s.
Yuengling experienced some lean years in the 1960s and 1970s, as mass-market brands started to infiltrate its home base. But as other regional brewers fell by the wayside, Yuengling managed to survive.
The current company president, Dick Yuengling, took over the brewery in the early 1980s, bringing a flair for marketing to a brewery that scarcely knew the word. During his tenure, Yuengling has introduced a number of revivalist products to bolster the brewery’s timeless Yuengling Porter and Chesterfield Ale. Today D. G. Yuengling & Son is benefiting from the specialty beer surge, and the old-fashioned beers the company brews are enjoying some celebrity.
See MICROBREWERY and PORTER.
Pottsville Porter
Yuengling’s Pottsville Porter, “brewed expressly for the tavern and family trade,” might be considered the brewery’s trademark product. Yuengling was brewing porter (albeit a bottom-fermented version) when the porter style was all but extinct, even in Great Britain. Pottsville Porter is somewhat lighter-bodied than traditional porters (perhaps a result of the lagerlike production process), but it fits the bill in all the important respects: dark amber color, nice malty aroma, and roasty, coffeeish flavor. It was available into the early 1980s in squat old-style bottles with a label of antique design. For better or worse, the package has been updated, and the beer is now bottled in the popular long-neck style.
