The highly recommended Rob Percival from Lallemand took us on a fascinating journey through some excellent examples of sour, lambic and, quite definitely, ‘other’ types of beer made with interesting yeasts.
Starting with sours he introduced us to yeasts which acidify then moved on to wild yeasts and blended beers from a completely different brewing culture (pun intended). He ended the, extended, session by presenting us with beers made with non-beer yeasts and, in particular, a grape beer specially shipped over from Italy. The Italians are combining wine and beer in novel ways and making extensive use of yeast. Cloudwater have a similar type of beer fermented with saison, champagne yeasts and Brett. A very complex brewing process producing an interesting and complex beer.
Rob is a true brewers geek, he works for one of the few yeast companies and seems to be involved in a staggering number of projects and beers. It was obvious that he was only skimming the very top of his barrel of knowledge and could have presented for days on a number of different topics. It was quite the education. Lots of excellent, strong beers were drunk so I hope that a decent amount of knowledge was retained.
It will take a lot to top this.