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Brian Gray - The Yeast Song (SHADOW)

from SpinTunes #15 Round 4 by Spintunes

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Funny thing about yeast. You put out the proper nutrition – typically some kind of milled grain or fruit or really anything with stored carbohydrate energy mixed with water – and it literally shows up out of the air and does its thing for free. It eats the sugar and yields alcohol and carbon dioxide. That’s if you’re on Earth at least. If you’re on your way to an alien world, there’s no way to know if something else there does the same thing. Or worse yet, eats your food and yields toxins.

So our travelers have to bring their own yeast with them. To make matters trickier, dried yeast doesn’t last much more than 4-6 months, and frozen not even that. So unlike plant seeds and more like animals, they need to keep the yeast alive by feeding it. Given the choice between baker’s yeast, which gives off more CO2, and brewer’s yeast, which favors alcohol production, the colonists chose the latter. Officially for ease of distillation for medical purposes, sterilizing things and what not.

Now technically they could have brought both, keeping the baker’s yeast alive in the form of sourdough starters that they feed regularly with fresh flour. But there was worry about cross contamination through the air, weakening the specific strengths of both while on board. The plan is when they reach their destination, to begin anew on breeding separate strains for specific purposes as was done on Earth a long time ago, their bread being just a touch less fluffy in the meantime.

This song felt like exactly the kind of thing that would be sung by folks convincing themselves that by getting drunk they are saving lives while improving morale, all tongue in cheek of course. I drew heavily on Helan Går with the challenging-to-sing-fast middle section and the break in the lyrics to allow for drinking during the song (while slapping the table or stomping your feet). The music itself is as simple as possible so as to be easily learnable by anyone, but the lyrics get harder to do in step with your drinking more and more.

lyrics

We’re on a trip aboard a ship to salvage humankind
We gotta not go out of our collective freakin’ mind
So give a yelp and drink to help the colony survive (Wooo!)
'Cause that’s the ruse we choose to use to keep the yeast alive!

We’re on a trip aboard a ship to salvage humankind
We gotta not go out of our collective freakin’ mind
So give a yelp and drink to help the colony survive (Wooo!)
…We mill the malted barley grain until the gristy bits remain
…A properly heated water splash converts the starch into a mash
And that’s the ruse we choose to use to keep the yeast alive!

We’re on a trip aboard a ship to salvage humankind
We gotta not go out of our collective freakin’ mind
So give a yelp and drink to help the colony survive (Wooo!)
…We mill the malted barley grain until the gristy bits remain
…A properly heated water splash converts the starch into a mash
…The lautering yields a sweetened musk and separates the wort from husk
…We boil and boil until she stops extractin’ bitter from the hops
And that’s the ruse we choose to use to keep the yeast alive!

We’re on a trip aboard a ship to salvage humankind
We gotta not go out of our collective freakin’ mind
So give a yelp and drink to help the colony survive (Wooo!)
…We mill the malted barley grain until the gristy bits remain
…A properly heated water splash converts the starch into a mash
…The lautering yields a sweetened musk and separates the wort from husk
…We boil and boil until she stops extractin’ bitter from the hops
…Now it’s time for coolin’ down and makin’ sure ain’t no hops aroun’
…Give ‘er the yeast and make with ventin’ cause now’s the time to start fermentin’
And that’s the ruse we choose to use to keep the yeast alive!

We’re on a trip aboard a ship to salvage humankind
We gotta not go out of our collective freakin’ mind
So give a yelp and drink to help the colony survive (Wooo!)
…We mill the malted barley grain until the gristy bits remain
…A properly heated water splash converts the starch into a mash
…The lautering yields a sweetened musk and separates the wort from husk
…We boil and boil until she stops extractin’ bitter from the hops
…Now it’s time for coolin’ down and makin’ sure ain’t no hops aroun’
…Give ‘er the yeast and make with ventin’ cause now’s the time to start fermentin’
…Then more yeast is gettin’ busy makin’ the lager nice an fizzy
…Finally it’s time to dwell ‘er in the cellar gettin’ meller
And that’s the ruse we choose to use to keep the yeast alive!

credits

from SpinTunes #15 Round 4, released December 17, 2018

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Spintunes is a semi-annual songwriting contest. Every other week, the competitors receive a challenge and a week to meet it.

Each album on this site contains the responses to a single challenge.

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