Guinness Yeast Article

[Scrattajack]

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...sts-are-genetically-unique-among-irish-beers/

 

[An Ankoù]

Very interesting article, but for the wrong reasons. Chen Ly clearly doesn't have a clue about beer and brewing and seems to be clutching at straws. if I were ignorant, I might understand from:

Using different strains of this yeast can result in different types of beer, such as stouts or lagers, and can even influence its flavour profile.

... that it's the choice of yeast that causes stout to be different to lager. Not as daft as it sounds, lots of people have told me that they thought beer was made entirely from hops.

So Guinness yeast is different to other yeasts, There are many "house" yeasts that are different to all other yeasts. Nothing special there and I doubt that the genetic analysis of Guinness yeasts is recent, although establishing its lineage, may be. And what does this mean:

“This information could potentially be used to further develop these yeasts or other yeasts used in industrial applications.”

I hate seeing drivel like this in a reputable publication like New Scientist.

 

[YeastFace]

Have attached the research paper but haven't got round to reading it yet.

 

[Jim Brewster]

So Guinness yeast is different to other yeasts, There are many "house" yeasts that are different to all other yeasts. Nothing special there

That's what I thought too, every house strain will have a certain amount of uniqueness due to mutations over the generations.

I read through the paper above although a lot of it wasn't easy to understand what the significance was, but I think they basically concluded the Guinness yeasts are descended from a yeast from Carlsberg labs, which seems reasonable.

I think possibly the most interesting thing is that they said the Guinness yeasts were found to be POF+ which is surprising, although in a stout the flavour threshold to phenolics is higher. Probably goes some way towards explaining why it's different from other Irish yeasts as it's not a trait many brewers on these isles favour. So maybe they used a different yeast for Hop House 13 as that didn't have a particularly phenolic flavour.

 

[An Ankoù]

Have attached the research paper but haven't got round to reading it yet.

Now we're talking. I'll have a read if that later on, but for the moment it's Friday and the weekend needs seeing in.

 

[foxy]

Coopers has a uniquely noticeable yeast strain, used throughout their ales. They don't have a need to put 'best before' on their cans and bottles. They use 'best after' on their product.
The Coopers Story

 

[Twostage]

Going to have to read both articles, but on the subject of unique/yeast adapting - I remember reading in the Yeast book (from the series Yeast, malt, hops, water) where someone tried to make a beer in a far off land (would have to re-read to see where) that would taste like a particular UK beer. The first brew did, second brew less so. By the third brew (and third generation of yeast) the beer tasted like what the local beers did because the yeast had adapted to the local fermentables they made the beer from.

So its possible that if you used the correct guiness grist and pitched any yeast and harvested it over three generations of beer you'd also have guiness's unique yeast.

 

[Twostage]

Have attached the research paper but haven't got round to reading it yet.

Read it. (well speed read it). Didn't come across any wows really. They've been brewing with the same family of yeast since the 1800s, probably imported it from Europe, haven't shared it with any breweries in Ireland or used any of their yeasts. Not sure what the researchers were expecting.

The graphs that show the family tree of yeasts was interesting.