Brewmaster Dan Peterson recently dug up an old journal entry from 2016 about our house White River yeast strain that we wanted to share with you all:

I made it up to Mt. Hood late in the day yesterday. I didn’t have any plans, kinda bailed on some Sunday chores, grabbed snowshoes and warm clothes and busted up the hill. I was met with a gentle snowstorm at Bennett Pass when I set out just before dusk. I followed some tracks up off the path and spent some time bushwhacking through the woods. The Doug firs swung in slow ellipses high up in the wind. As dusk became twilight I made my way around to the snowmobile track and decided that I might as well make it an evening hike under the rising moon and turned deeper into the woods.

As it grew darker it seemed to become quieter with no sound but the “shush kink, shush kink” of my snowshoes muffled by the snow. At some point along that snowmobile track I passed a spot where, in the fall of 2015, I had left a mason jar of sterile brewer’s wort to collect yeast and bacteria. Some of the yeast and bacteria strains from that jar are still in my collection on petri plates. Now those microscopic forest-dwelling organisms are tucked beneath five feet of snow.

Another jar from nearby on the bank of the White River on Mount Hood came up with a promising yeast strain with which, following a battery of trial batches, I felt comfortable enough to brew some beer. The character of this yeast is like nothing else I have ever come across: throwing esters and phenolics contributing subtle banana and clove aroma of a Bavarian Weissbier, a clean sharpness seen in many lager strains and, most interestingly, a citrus zing seen in very few cultured yeasts. I decided that it would make a fine farmhouse style yeast.

For me, finding this yeast on the breeze of one of my favorite places in the world and brewing beer with it is a special experience. One concept that I found inspiring when studying the incredibly complex systems in molecular biology is that these things have existed for a very long time without being known or named by humans. They are all nature, everywhere. The more we learn about cell biology, and nature in general, the more marvelous we realize it is. No one knows how long this yeast has been drifting in the air on the slopes of Mount Hood. No one knows where else it might exist. It has never been named before. 

I call it White River. 

Sometimes I feel like White River and I were meant to meet, maybe that’s crazy, but walking through the snow, enveloped in darkness and silence, near where I found it felt akin to visiting the home of a good friend.

Since Dan wrote this journal entry back in 2016, the White River yeast strain has showed up in a number of our farmhouse-style beers including White River Saison, Biere de Garde, The Sentinel, and Cherise du Nord.