The Mixed-Culture Master

Chad Yakobson of Crooked Stave discusses his brewing techniques and his pioneering work with Brettanomyces.

- Jonathan Ingram

The image of the brewer who is part mad scientist and part artist has long been one of the iconic images of craft brewing lore. With Chad Yakobson, it seems to work the other way around. He’s more of a pure scientist who gets a little crazy on the artistic side with his Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project, where the specialty is mixed-culture fermentations and Brettanomyces beers.

While earning his master’s degree at Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University in the school’s distinguished center of brewing and distilling, Yakobson wrote his dissertation on Brettanomyces yeast, which is now beer-world famous. The idea was to isolate strains of Brettanomyces, then study how they worked in the fermentation of wort and what compounds they produced in the process. Available online, the dissertation reads scientifically, but is totally engaging for anyone interested in the process of making beer. It also serves as a great introduction to the underlying appeal of sour beer as a more creative vessel for brewers.

By understanding the characteristics and compounds produced in fermentation and by developing his own strains of yeast, Yakobson is like a painter who seeks to add more colors to his palette, then works on how to combine these colors to create unique renditions. When it comes to his processes to make the Crooked Stave beers, think Dali, maybe, then Matisse and some Jackson Pollack. The resulting beers such as the peach sour Persica, which is a fairly complex and approachable creation, can be pricey due to the amount of work, aging and expertise put into them at the brewery in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Denver. But beer aficionados continue to pony up and the brewery continues to grow, expanding from 2,000 barrels of production last year to 5,000 barrels this year.