MASHOUT MAGAZINE

Did you know White Labs has its own brewery along with its famed yeast propagation laboratory?

White Labs is well known for its yeast. Since its early origins in California in 1995 but what you maybe didn’t know is that it has a very interesting approach to their brewery.

I was fortunate enough to meet Ed Farris at White Labs in late June for a tour of their laboratory and brewery. Ed is a man of many hats at White Labs. He’s done some laboratory work and also brewed beer there. I’ll start by saying I don’t have many pictures because photography was not allowed outside of the first hallway but I assure you, it’s as cool as you’d imagine it to be.

The first place we started at in the history hallway. Here you can see the history of single cell organisms going all the way back 4 billion years. Fast forward a few billion years and you’ll see residue found in pottery is linked to early fermentation. It’s pretty wild to see that put into perspective. Of course, the most recent intonation on the time line is White Labs creation of their Asheville lab in 2017.

The second stop took me by their lab where they were growing yeast. Take your homebrew pouch and expand it 430 times! Here they feed the yeast oxygen to reproduce and the blowoff houses were beating like a drum! In this room there was a lot of different yeast cultures reproducing, getting no ready to transfer to smaller packages and go out to home-brewers just like you.

They package up these yeasts and ship them out from their Asheville location. This east coast location serves many large breweries as well as home-brewers.

Their brewery was unique as well. Not as many tanks as you’d expect but what really intrigued me was their brewing system. The system can brew to a specific gravity, blend it with R.O. water and bring down your gravity to its desired starting gravity and give your desired volume too! Ed told me this brewing system was one of only a couple in the United States.

I was lucky enough to try some beers while I was there. Two specific beers I tried were IPAs brewed with different yeast. What’s wild is they were literally the same grain bill and hop schedule but the yeasts were different. It was remarkable how their newest yeast out, Suava, really had the hop flavor lingering much longer on your tongue. Not something I’d seen previous to this. I’ve seen different hop schedules produce different flavors but never actually change the way you sense the hops while drinking. One thing Ed told me was, “Suava was originally developed as a hazy strain but after resting and fining it cleared up. It still has those great properties of a hazy with the lingering hops, but is as clear as a west coast.”

You can check that yeast out here —> Suava Yeast

What I loved about their beer menu is that each beer is categorized by grain bills but each beer is brewed with different yeast. Many people don’t even recognize it but if you’re a beer geek you’ll absolutely love that aspect of trying beers here!

The food? Phenomenal. Their pizza is a must try in the Asheville area. My wife and I went with the Margherita. (Chef’s kiss)

White Labs was one of the only liquid yeasts available to me early on in my home-brew career. In that ten years, they’ve expanded their yeast offerings and increased technology with breathable packaging. They’re really at the forefront of liquid yeast. They treat each cell with utmost care and then take that to create their own beers to showcase the different flavor profiles these yeasts create.

If you are ever in Asheville I’d highly recommend checking it out!

Cheers!

By Matt Dailey, Oil Creek Brewing Co.
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