Today, White Labs, along with Wyeast, are the two oldest, largest, and perhaps most-preeminent, industry-leading producers of yeast. Of course, it wasn’t always this way. The story of White Labs is the story of San Diego beer. Chris began his higher education at UC Davis (today, it’s one of the leading brewing schools in the nation), enrolling in Dr. Michael Lewis’ upper division Brewing and Malting Science course.

After graduation, Chris moved to San Diego to study biochemistry at U.C. San Diego. There, he met Yuseff Cherney (now of Ballast Point). Chris signed up for Yuseff’s course because he wanted to learn how to brew all-grain. The two guys quickly became friends. “I think Yuseff liked me because I worked in a lab,” Chris imagines.

Whatever brought the two together, they started homebrewing, 15 gallons of beer each batch. With these batches, Yuseff was developing the recipes and the concepts for Ballast Point and Chris was developing White Labs’ yeast.