Origins
This story begins two years ago at a corporate holiday party. The CEO stood up to speak about the success achieved in the previous year, and he made a special call-out to the people that labored with him for the past decade to make his dream a reality. His words, while inspiring, had a secondary impact: my time and talent is currently being wasted by building someone else’s dream.“My time and talent is currently being wasted by building someone else’s dream.” While this is not a revelation new to many, the misalignment between my values and company direction made this discovery even more poignant. My education is in statistics, my background is as an actuary, my passion was never insurance. That holiday party set me on a new path.
These last two years have been spent squirreling away startup funds and second-guessing my decision to leave a lucrative and safe career – a director in a Fortune 100 company is hard to give up. And now in my third week of unemployment, the most challenging change is answering, “what do you do?” – the response of being in insurance is happily no longer correct.
I had now been making cheese in my San Francisco apartment for over three years; my experimentations with brewing have percolated for approximately one year. I had always been amazed by the similarities in process. In all situations, the maker is attempting to make the perfect biome for a desired microorganism to flourish, as well as one where undesirable microorganisms cannot grow or do not gain a foothold. The concept of manipulating environments, adjusting nutrients and changing ionic balances always fascinates me; I find it similar to simulation games that fester in my thoughts with endless what-if scenarios.
My passion for cheese and beer has led me to purchase and dedicate two wine fridges to become my lager and cheese caves. Temperature control had been great, but humidity fluctuation issues will be a topic for a separate post. A lot of funds were also invested in quality cheese molds and brewing equipment and resources. I will point out that beer equipment was cheaper than cheese. Finally, a home-made cheese press was constructed to aid in pressing the semi-hard and hard cheese, of which I am a huge fan. My small apartment in San Francisco would be an interesting study of competing yeasts and cultures from beer, cheese and bread.
It was with this arsenal that I honed my craft and better defined my path: fermented foods. I would never be accused of being a foodie; my ability to pair food is sadly underdeveloped, and my knowledge of spices is laughable; however, the science and math involved in getting yeasts and bacteria to do one’s bidding intrigues me. It is this knowledge I wish to share, while integrating it with my background as a mathematician and statistician.
I can now answer the question of “what do you do?” – I am the Fermentician.
