Following Pope Saint Gregory's dictum laid out in his letter to Saint Augustine of Canterbury, the monks of Mendel's monastery "... abstained from flesh, meat and from things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese and eggs"; a tradition of fasting that had come into full force in the nineteenth century. This meant that Mendel only ate breakfast on fasting days. But he wasn't particularly hungry as the three monks opened the door to the temporary laboratory and went to investigate the results of their experiment.
Klacel lit and turned up the gas light while Mendel slowly lifted the first bottle from the shelf by the stove. Holding the liquid up to the flame he peered at its contents. Covering the bottom of the bottle of broth was a gray slimy mess in which and from which a collection of tiny silver bubbles were being emitted.
"I think it has worked," he said excitedly, passing the bottle of bacteria to his colleagues. "I'll get the microscope set up."
While his friends looked at the gray mass at the bottom of the experimental bottle, Mendel once more set up and adjusted his microscope. Brother Joseph was given the honor of opening the bottle and preparing the first slide of its contents, and Mendel almost snatched it from his hands as it became ready for examination.
"Look," he shouted after a few seconds of focusing, and was pushed out of the way as his two friends struggled to see the specimen next.
When they had all had their turns, and a second sample had been drawn from the second bottle, with identical results, the three monks sat around the table looking at one another.
Brother Joseph opened the scientific report published by the Frenchman Pasteur.
"Well," Mendel said at last, "that seems fairly conclusive. We have just obtained the same results with our sour wine that Herr Doktor Pasteur obtained with his sour sugar beet fermentations. If we are both correct, then Herr Druer's wine is going bad because it is contaminated by these strange, tiny rods."
"What do you think they are doing?" Klacel asked, taking another look down the microscope at the offending life forms.
"It says here," Brother Joseph told him, reading from Pasteur's work, "that the yeast cells ferment the juices from either the grapes or sugar beet to the alcohol that fortifies the wine. In good fermentations Herr Pasteur only found clusters of budding yeast cells, and nothing else. But in fermentations that were going bad he also found these tiny rods, and he was able to show that they too could convert the juices, but this time into sour tasting substances."
"It becomes a race then," said Klacel thoughtfully, "In good fermentations the yeast cells have no competitors for the juices from the fruits and they have some internal way of making alcohol from them. But in the bad fermentations a second life form is present. These tiny rods, being smaller and quicker to grow, compete with the larger, slower yeast for the fruit juices, but, they have some internal way of making a souring substance which makes the wine useless."
"That would be my feeling," said Mendel. He too had spent the evening of the previous day reading all the information he could find in the library on the subject of yeast, fermentation and the products they produced.
"I have been reading the work of Wohler and Liebig," he went on, "as much as thirty years ago, Herr Liebig recognized that alcohol, ether and muriatic ether should all be regarded as compounds of a radical composed of two atoms of carbon and five of hydrogen. He has called this the ethly radical. In related work, Berzelius regards the alcohol from graph juice not as a hydrate of ether but as an oxide of a radical that has two carbon atoms and six of hydrogen." He paused to see if he was making his point.
"So?" said Klacel, not sure of where Mendel was taking the conversation.
"So," Mendel persisted, "don't you see how this fits with the work of Lavoisier, Gay-Lussac and Thenard?"
"No," Klacel told him bluntly, "who are they?"
Mendel snorted at his ignorance, "They were the founders of organic analysis," he said pointedly, "If I remember rightly, they were the first to analyze the ratios of elements in organic substances such as sugar and starch."
Brother Joseph, who had also read about the start of organic chemistry, added, "They found that three types of atoms were present in sugar and starch, namely carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. These were in the proportion of one of carbon to two of hydrogen to one of oxygen."
"Which is why Schmidt proposed the name 'carbo-hydrate' for this group of substances. He thought that sugar was hydrated or 'water added to' carbon," Mendel finished.
"So?" Klacel persisted in his most annoying way.
"So," Mendel replied, trying not to react to Brother Matthew's fained ignorance. He was well aware that Klacel was using this method to get him to frame his ideas into a recognizable, and useful, form. "Grape juice contains a lot of sugar, in 1815 Chevreul showed that all sugars are alike, so the beet sugar and the grape sugar are probably the same substance. If we are right, the yeast cells are converting the organic sugar into the similar, but smaller organic 'ethyl' compounds described by Gay-Lussac and Thenard, of which alcohol is one."
"Yes," exclaimed Brother Joseph, recognizing Mendel's train of thought. "I see what you mean. The yeast and rod-like organisms growing in the grape juice are converting the sugar into 'ethyl-compounds' by means of a chemical reaction, but the yeast are producing the oxide form favored by Berzelius, while the rods are producing other 'ethyl-compounds' which have different chemical properties."
"A reasonable theory," Klacel agreed reluctantly. "But how does that help us?"
"It gives us a place to start looking for an answer," Mendel said. He took out a sheet of Abbot Napp's best notepaper, pulled an inkwell closer to him and began chewing on the end of a cheap pen. "If we are right about the causes of the sour wine, then we must achieve two objects in our search for a solution."
"Yes?" said Klacel, after Mendel had taken a long, thoughtful pause.
"First," Brother Gregory replied, writing down the points on the paper in his clear, open hand. "First we must find a way of preventing the rods from growing, or at least out-growing the yeast cells in the vats of wine."
"Will that be possible, given that the wine is already contaminated?" Brother Joseph asked.
"I'm not yet sure," Mendel replied truthfully, "but if the rods continue to grow I think we can be sure that the wine will spoil."
"And the second objective?" Klacel asked.
"We must find a way of getting the yeast to grow faster so that they can compete with the rods and turn the sugar into alcohol," Mendel said, alternately chewing and writing. "This is critical. The yeast must succeed while the rods fail. We need a way of separating these creatures so that we can study their strengths and weaknesses. Let us list some of the things we know about the habits of these organisms."