New lager beer flavours pioneered by Finnish researchers

Espoo, Finland – The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, one of Northern Europe’s largest multidisciplinary research organizations, has published a groundbreaking scientific study on the successful generation of hybrid lager yeasts.

The same few yeast strains have been used in the production of lager beer for centuries, even though a wide range of yeast strains are utilized to produce different nuances of flavour in ale, whisky, wine and cider.

The new research successfully imparted new flavour and accelerated the beer’s production process.

Traditionally, the reliable and cold-resistant Saccharomyces pastorianus yeast species has been used to produce a variety of different tasting lagers. This is actually a hybrid composed of two different yeast species, one of which was recently discovered in the wild.

These findings awoke researchers to the possibility of creating new, customized lager yeasts through the selective mating of strains of different yeast species.

The resultant new yeasts have inherited characteristics from their parents’ strains, including accelerating the wort fermentation process and improving ethanol production. They are also more tolerant of cold than one of their parent strains, and settle better after fermentation than their predecessors.

The study was published in the online version of the Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology publication series on 15 February 2015.