Not saying you're wrong about the yeast but what mushrooms other than field, swiss brown and button are the same basic spore?
Portabello, enoki, shitake, truffle etc are all very, very different from each other.
Been out at the LHBSs so back to reply just now
I used mushroom industry as an analogy because mushrooms are higher order fungi, and yeasts are unicellular fungi. To the point even Ale yeasts will produce spores! -- though under high distress
You need to get the scientific naming down. I'm not going to go into Spore -> Strains cross-overs because it might twist your mind to know there are not just two sexes but up to 4 sexes is what we deal with normally with spores.
The scientific name of a species tells you the genus and the species name of an organism.
With yeasts the first name is the genus, and the second name is the species. (same with mushrooms btw).
So Saccharomyces which is latin for Sugar Fungi (not a big surprise) comprises over 1,500+ species catalogued to date.
cerevisiae in my rusty Latin is "fleshy to look at" and is the species.
So the species of sugar yeasts that is fleshy to look at is Saccharomyces cerevisiae and it is used for baking and brewing and actually, operates in a manner similar to a human cell and therefore an important model organism in genetics and molecular biology.. but lets not go there. It is known as S. cerevisiae short form of the scientific name, Brewers yeast, Ale yeast, Top-fermenting yeast, Bakers yeast, and Budding yeast.
See the problem with common names, they multiply out of control and really are referencing the same exact yeast.
Now back to spores and strains. Saccharomyces cerevisiae spores and mushroom spores have genetic material to cross, normally we can think in Male and Female crossings for designing trait matrixes using standard high school biology course knowledge. However, we can have to deal with up to 4 different sexes and crossings between them.
Lets skip all that and go to the end result. The end result is you have a tremendous mixture of genetic crossings. Each of these is called a Strain. Each genetic crossing mix is a unique set of genes that can switch on and off various aspects of the fungi in question. This leads to certain strains being stronger or weaker at doing anything that has to do with being that particular fungi.
If you isolate a strain you have what is called a mono culture.
If you catalogue that strain with others you have a strain catalogue.
You can grow out your strains in your strain catalogue and compare and contrast how well each perform for a set given task (say fermenting wort into Ale).
You can then market to consumers who don't know anything about all the above and give them fancy names like Montrachet, or Nottingham, or psuedo scientific sounding names like S-04, its all marketing fluff and only serves to sell to consumers.
Now backing up we see that no matter what the strain we are talking about, we are simply talking about one strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or bringing back the common language, one strain of Bakers yeast
or also 100% correct one strain of Brewers yeast, or etc. etc. one strain of Ale yeast. Its all the same thing.
So then you have lots of arguments among the common people about what x or y or z is and how x is not y and z is close to x by y is just wierd. The scientist just shakes his head or smiles and enjoys the humour in it all.
So you can brew beer with bakers yeast.
You can make bread with brewers yeast.
and for our Mead guys brew Mead with bakers yeast.
Because they are the same exact organism!
Each "strain" will perform better or worse at both leavening bread and fermenting wort into Ale, or must into Mead.
What scares people is there is no idea what a new unknown yeast strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae will do when its sold for one end environment and instead used in different end environment.
What makes me shake my head is if a recipe is designed around a specific strain of yeast (say the JAO mead with bakers yeast) it has been balanced and crafted to produce good results when using that strain. To use, say a wine yeast strain or ale yeast strain with it is just crazy because you've put the whole balance out of whack and the end result will not taste the same. The contra goes with recipes designed to make say a mead with a specific wine yeast strain, to go back and brew out that particular recipe with bakers yeast is crazy as the recipe was balanced around that specific wine yeast strain. Now with JAO, the recipe is built around the fleischmann bakers yeast strain of 10+ years ago. Although it makes sense that fleischmann is not available locally (unless you live in Melbourne and go to the American Shop in Bentleigh) and although not available that another bakers yeast will more closely match the properties of the recipes strain more so than say an Ale yeast strain. This is why for certain recipes I politely ignore suggestions that deviate too far out of the original strains parameters. For most of the other recipes I'l politely ignore someone suggesting using bakers yeast as its too far out of the parameters of the recipes I have (ale and wine yeast strains). Its all rather logical.
Now lager yeast on the other hand, is Saccharomyces pastorianus. mmm I think you can take it from here
P.S. Skipping the mushrooms because as consumers you are being sold some mushrooms at different "age" in their life cycle as completely different mushrooms in the supermarkets when they are the same mushroom to start with. But you'll gladly pay more for one with a different name
Hopefully I can rest my piece on yeast and without touching the sourdough argument (coming from a complete sourdough bread nutter).
