Hello everybody, and welcome to a new season of Ithaca Bites, the Red Letter Daze food column. Every week, I’ll discuss a different dish or ingredient, from the humdrum to the exotic, with a little bit of science thrown in for flavoring.

As the fall semester roars into gear and leaves things like relaxation and sunshine in the dust, the average Cornell student’s diet becomes much less dependent upon picnic staples like watermelon and hamburgers as beer consumption returns to its nine-month plateau.

Still, each swig of Keystone and Pabst Blue Ribbon has a key ingredient in common with those fluffy hamburger buns, and that is a nifty little creature called a yeast.