We often ask big questions about big things; how did mankind split the atom, how did we first fly, how did we traverse the wide seas? But there is a greater achievement than all those, and a finer friendship than that between dogs or horses and us. It is the relationship between us and the most apparently contemptible little creature in creation: yeast.
Yeast makes us free. Without yeast, we would be glum tribes sitting in circles grinding our teeth flat on ears of wheat, trying to make merry on prune juice and finally beating our loved ones to death in boredom. No society which did not domesticate that cunning little reptile, yeast, attracts a single tourist, exports a single idea, or masters a single technology. The cultivation of yeast presupposes organisation, planning, a sense of future, a belief in the ability to transform. Did the ancients worship yeast? If they didn't, they should have done.
Versatile fungus
Yeast belongs to one most important families of fungus, the ascomycetes; and if you want proof of the indefatigable versatility of nature, go and ask an ascomycete what is does for a living. They do everything; they are the policemen, the traffic cops, the sewage cleansers, the gardeners, the lion-tamers and the test-pilots of the fungal world. They clean, they scour, they explore. There are 1,500 species which live on the chitin of spiders; and some lucky fungophile categorised and then counted the lot of them.
Yeast is civilisation; slightly anagramised, it remains Ireland's greatest poet. It can invade the most unpropitious brew and turn it into an elixir which brings a smile to the face of a recently orphaned haddock and enables women to give childbirth like beans being poured out of a tin.
The twin-essence of yeasts is variety and versatility. Yeasts detest monopoly as they detest fire and flame. Yet government in Ireland has twice permitted the creation of yeastly monopolies in the drinks industry. Guinness was allowed to absorb most of the brewing competition in this country. Many beers vanished. Others, such as Smithwicks and McArdles, sickly and unconvincing things, survived. In the distilling industry, a similar fate befell many whiskeys.
Birth of the microbrewery
This is anathema for yeasts; they are an expressive and exuberant species, Sicilians at a wedding trying to get off with the bridesmaids. Yeasts detest the aridity of monopoly; they are incompatible as boiler-foundries and string quartets, and from this endurance vile, there seemed no escape. But there was; and it came of course from the USA, where the culture of individualism is almost yeastly in its range and power. Americans invented great monopolies; and they invented ways of smashing them.
Firstly, the great American industrialised brewing monopolies invented some of the worst beers created since the very first yeast crawled out the protoplasmic slime, caught the barman's eye and nodded for a pint. The US produced brews that suggested the brewery was located in an ass's bladder. But the typically American reaction was then to create good beers locally; the microbrewery was born.
The concept of the microbrewery took wing to Ireland just over two years ago in the form of the Dublin Brewing Company, piloted by Liam McKenna, and helped by another exile, Kieran Finnerty. They brewed four quite marvellous beers - Maeve's, a beautiful wheat beer with a delicious edge that brings a small tear to the eye, Revolution 1798, which is a richly rounded red ale, Beckett's, a golden brew that wanders around the palate like a gang of Norwegian explorers over the South Pole, and Darcy's, a large and sumptuously tasty stout.
That is point one: point two is that they are available in both bottled and draught form - if, that is, they are available at all. Tesco-Quinsworth stocks just one variety, Beckett's, and not always. Superquinn supposedly stocks them, but I've been unable to find any of them in my local branch. Finian Sweeney's splendid off-licence on Dorset Street is one of the few outlets to carry all four beers.
Yet the true absurdity of the story is not their availability or otherwise in Ireland, but the astounding success these beers enjoy around Europe. Oddbins in England sells all four beers; Tesco UK sells two of them (Tesco Ireland, remember, just one). They sell hugely in Sweden, Finland, France and Canada. Exports account for nearly 70% of the Dublin Brewing Company's sales - without the booming foreign market, the company would be carrion for whatever yeasts feast on dead breweries.
Competitors
And that would be very much to the taste of Guinness, of course; and it was no doubt what Guinness had in mind when it launched the St James Gate micro-brewery with four beers to compete with DBC's quartet nearly two years ago. Several million pounds and fourteen months later, the St James Gate microbrewery was being nibbled by those very yeasts intended for the DBC cadaver.
A small but earnest suggestion: these are quite wonderful beers, tasty, clean, clever, the pride and joy of Mr and Mrs Yeast and their family. Demand them from your pub, your supermarket, your off-licence. We are a richer and happier people by far for their yeastly presence.