Slow Wins
FOR EVERY BEER BREWED,
the yeast cells live out a whole series of steps. They wake up, grow new yeast cells, consume sugars, and produce carbon dioxide, alcohol, and a host of other compounds, then drop back into a dormant state and fall out of solution. It’s easy to overstate the extent to which we as brewers actually “make” beer and just as easy to understate the extent to which yeast cells are doing the bulk of the hard work. Yeast, though, works in an environment that we manipulate, and the ways in which we tinker with that environment greatly impact the work that yeast can do within it. One of the key features of that environment is temperature, and good brewers manage temperatures to give their yeast the best shot at producing the beer that the brewers (and, I think, the yeast) really want.
We could talk for days about ideal fermentation temperatures for different yeast strains, but we’re going to keep it