Friday, September 3, 2010

North To The Future

Wow!  I've been a little remiss in keeping this blog updated.  Since my last post life has been rather busy.  The good news is that my broken tube of Burton ale yeast plated out with consistent yeast colony growth with no evidence of contamination.  I chose an isolate from the plate and made a new tube and have subsequently used it to brew up a nice ordinary bitter.

In other news, the safari has now moved to Fairbanks, Alaska.  It was a big move from Massachusetts to Alaska but the cultures all made it with flying colors.  Not wanting to deal with crossing international borders with a collection of culture samples to explain I chose to ship them instead.  I had a insulated shipper that all of my various cultures (including the various Saccharomyces cerevisiae, my sour dough culture, and a kombucha culture) packed nicely into with some ice packs.  I dropped them off at the post-office and sent them off first class mail to some friends in Fairbanks.  I was very pleased when I found out that everything arrived intact and alive.

Having the yeast ranch in Alaska should prove very useful since yeast prices are somewhat higher here and the selection of yeasts available in town is limited.  Shipping from the lower 48 can be pricey and slow and there is more of a concern with viability on arrival.