I bought this book because I wanted to (maybe) start doing some yeast ranching over at my place. See, I really love this Wyeast/Rogue Pacman yeast, but it's got very limited availability (special edition/once a year/blahblahblah). So I was hoping that this book would be a good one for the homebrewer that wants to get into yeast ranching to read.
Unfortunately, it's not. That's not to say it's not a great book (it is). Jamil Zainasheff has risen to the height of homebrewing royalty and is clearly a really smart guy. Chris White is the founder of White Labs, provider of pure liquid yeast cultures for homebrewers and commercial brewers. These guys are both experts in beer and brewing and the book is full of great information for beer geeks who really want a better understanding of yeast and fermentation. I would recommend it for the advanced homebrewer or commercial brewer. However, if you want resources on simple, reproducible yeast ranching, I would recommend the following (free) links instead and save your money for some other book or yeast ranching equipment.
Here you go:
- http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/slanting-yeast-133103/
- http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Making_Plates_Slants&printable=yes
- http://brewiki.org/Yeast/Culturing
- http://www.maltosefalcons.com/tech/yeast-propagation-and-maintenance-principles-and-practices
- http://www.homebrewtalk.com/blogs/osbornbrewing/539-yeast-ranching-home.html
The free information in those articles is much more practical and usable than the book. You will need a pressure canner like the one of the left here. I looked around at Wal-Mart and they don't really have anything suitable. I usually like to buy this kind of stuff at wally world because it's so ridiculously cheap.
The book is available here (Amazon).
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