The Brewing Yeast Fermentation Conferences are held every 2 years, organised by Katherine Smart of the School of Biological and Molecular Sciences at Oxford Brookes University, UK. In August 2000 we published the proceedings of the second conference and in January of this year we published the proceedings of the third conference. The fourth conference is scheduled for September 2003. The book will be a carefully edited proceedings volume covering an area which is of vital importance to the brewing industry. This volume will cover a number of subjects of cutting edge importance and will be broadly divided into the following sections: Yeast Genomes, Yeast Management, Wort Composition, Yeast Handling and Stress, Fermentation, and Wild Yeasts.