Science Looks To Enhance Yeast For The Next Great Beer

Beer is one of the world’s oldest scientific creations. The fermentation process alone dates back to the Neolithic era.

And now researchers are working with the European Union, as part of the Aromagenesis project, to maximize yeast’s potential, develop new flavors and help brew the next great beer.

Yeast is one of beer’s primary ingredients along grain (mostly malted barley), hops and water. And while all of these are pretty essential, yeast (a fungus) rules the roost.

You see, yeast contains enzymes that when exposed to glucose starts breaking down in a process called glycolysis where the yeast converts those sugars into alcohol.

“All kinds of fermentation beverages start out with just some sugar solution,” Ursula Bond, a molecular biologist at Trinity College Dublin and coordinator for Aromagenesis, told Horizon, an official magazine of the European Union.

Yeast isn’t just crucial to the fermentation process, it’s also responsible for beer’s many flavors. And scientists working with the Aromagenesis project are looking to quicken yeast’s evolution through two separate processes…natural selection using thermal stress, and genetic editing.

Using thermal stress adaptive evolution, Bond’s team looks at yeasts with attractive flavor profiles and puts them under heat stress in a Darwinian process to generates heartier and more resilient strains.

“We want to introduce mutations naturally into yeast and we can do that by stressing and heating cells,” Bond says. “Then we let them adapt to certain conditions to see which ones survive the best.”

The other process that the Aromagenesis is utilizing is CRISPR, a simple yet powerful tool which allows researchers to easily alter DNA sequences and modify gene function.

“CRISPR techniques help the team deconstruct the flavor profiles within the yeast, and help build a roadmap to more efficient evolutions reports Popular Mechanics. “The scientists hope that between the two, they can present an accelerated natural process to a public at times skeptical of genetically modified food and drink.”

“There is always a desire for new varieties,” Prof Bond added, “That’s why the craft beer industry has become so popular.”