Note, this is a repost of an article I wrote for VTT’s Industrial Biotechnology Blog.
Lager beers – sometimes crisp & light pilsners, sometimes dark & malty doppelbocks, have a common denominator: They are all produced using the lager yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus, the workhorse of the lager brewing industry. This yeast is known for its tolerance to lower temperatures, and brewers take advantage of this when producing lager beers.
These beers typically have a ‘clean’ flavour profile (i.e. lack of yeast character) you see, and by fermenting the beer at colder temperatures, the yeast produces less flavour-active by-products.
Recent analysis of lager brewing yeast genomes has revealed that the many hundreds of strains used in the brewing industry are, in fact, all closely related – more like multiple variants of the same strain than individual strains. Brewers have essentially been using the same strain to brew lager beers for probably 500 years. This is in stark contrast to the other fermented beverage industries, ale, whiskey, wine, cider and so on, where a rich and diverse collection of individual yeast strains is taken for granted.
Therefore, there is huge potential for introducing diversity into the lager brewing industry by generating new strains of lager yeast.
But before one can create new lager yeast it is important to understand what exactly the lager yeast is…
It has been known for some time that lager yeast is actually a hybrid species – more like a mule than the proverbial workhorse. It was clear that one parent was the well-known ale yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It wasn’t until recently that the other side of the family, Saccharomyces eubayanus, was discovered. This discovery has allowed for the improved characterization of lager yeasts, and also opened up the possibility to create new tailor-made lager yeast strains. This is possible through mating of selected strains from the two parent species. These new strains could, e.g. produce unique flavours or ferment the beer more efficiently.
This is exactly what has been the focus of our ongoing research projects at VTT.
The research team. From left to right: Brian Gibson, Kristoffer Krogerus, Virve Vidgren and Frederico Magalhães in VTT’s pilot brewery.
Screening perfect parents to mate
There are four main challenges in generating new lager yeasts: To select suitable parent strains. To get the parents to mate. To separate the hybrid cells from the parents. And finally, to confirm that they actually are hybrids.
We began by screening a range of ale yeast strains, from both VTT’s Culture Collection and commercial yeast suppliers, for beneficial fermentation properties. Once suitable parent ale yeast strains had been identified, the next step was to try to mate them with a strain of S. eubayanus, the other parent of lager yeast.
Before mating, the parent strains still had to be modified with selection markers, so that any hybrid cells could be isolated from the population. We did this by selecting spontaneous auxotrophic mutants of the parent strains, i.e. cells that weren’t able to grow on media lacking certain amino acids. This meant the hybrid cells could be selected by their ability to grow on media lacking these certain amino acids. Mating was then attempted by simply mixing populations of both parent strains, and letting them grow for a couple of days.
© VTT/Ulla Holopainen
After isolating some potential hybrid cells, their hybrid status was confirmed through various PCR tests, which showed whether DNA from both parent strains was present in them. After confirmation that we had produced our own lager yeast hybrids, we wanted to compare them to the parent strains in an actual wort fermentation.
To our pleasant surprise, all hybrid strains performed better than both parent strains, fermenting faster and reaching higher ethanol contents!
The hybrid strains also inherited beneficial properties from both parent strains, such as strong flocculation, cold tolerance and maltotriose utilization.
These first results suggest that this technique is suitable for producing new lager yeast strains with unique properties. These new strains also have the benefit of being non-GMO, which currently at least remains a necessity for brewers.
We are continuing our attempts to find and create perfect lager yeast hybrids at VTT. Our research will especially pay attention to flavour formation and determining how their genetic composition is reflected in their physiology.
Our work will show, for the first time, that such hybrids can be created and how they can be applied in the brewing industry. The results will appear shortly in the Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechology:
Krogerus, K., Magalhães, F., Vidgren, V. & Gibson, B. (2015) New lager yeast strains generated by interspecific hybridization. Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology, in press. DOI:10.1007/s10295-015-1597-6.
Maybe someday also you have an opportunity to enjoy these new tasty lager beers in your local pub. Cheers!