Enter your email address below to join our mailing list:
My love and interest of wine came about by a very circuitous route. I attended graduate school at UC Berkeley in the Biochemistry Department and did my Ph.D. thesis on the genetic control of yeast mating. That may sound like a bunch of genetic mumbo jumbo to some, but it did provide me with a lot of hands on experience growing and culturing yeast in the lab, and the critical importance of sterile technique. Soon some of my lab mates and I discovered some other cool things that yeast could do…ferment sugar to alcohol. Not that it was a groundbreaking discovery, it had been known for a few thousand years. But our revelation as poor, underpaid graduate students was a route to cheap beer. So back in the mid 1980’s I took up the hobby of homebrewing (which I still do today, incidentally). Now with over a hundred batches of homebrew to my credit, I consider myself somewhat skilled at controlled fermentation. Would there be other opportunities to apply this skill in life? Only time would tell.
My love and interest of wine came about by a very circuitous route. I attended graduate school at UC Berkeley in the Biochemistry Department and did my Ph.D. thesis on the genetic control of yeast mating. That may sound like a bunch of genetic mumbo jumbo to some, but it did provide me with a lot of hands on experience growing and culturing yeast in the lab, and the critical importance of sterile technique. Soon some of my lab mates and I discovered some other cool things that yeast could do…ferment sugar to alcohol. Not that it was a groundbreaking discovery, it had been known for a few thousand years. But our revelation as poor, underpaid graduate students was a route to cheap beer. So back in the mid 1980’s I took up the hobby of homebrewing (which I still do today, incidentally). Now with over a hundred batches of homebrew to my credit, I consider myself somewhat skilled at controlled fermentation. Would there be other opportunities to apply this skill in life? Only time would tell.
