I am sure I will get this wrong and that Ron will be able to clarify but it appears that two forensic yeast researchers have determined that lager yeast came into existence twice during two separate events:
…the team discovered that it happened at least twice in two separate locations in Europe, giving rise to the two different lager families…The hybrid, which makes lager instead of ale, probably evolved in Bavarian beer-brewing cellars during the 16th century. The team also found that Saaz yeasts have a single copy of each parent yeast’s genome, whereas the Frohberg yeasts have an extra copy from S. cerevisiae. They believe this difference affects the flavour of the lager, as well as how quickly the yeasts can ferment the hops.
OK, so the egg heads in lab coats don’t know that hops do not do the fermenting. Forgive them. Take a breath. There, that’s better. Apparently, that there are Saaz and Frohberg strains of lager yeast has been long known. But what was not known was that they developed independently from each other – as this article in today’s New Scientist explains in further detail. Sadly, they cannot trace back to which Bavarian cave gave birth to which strain and when. Even more detail here including this interesting tidbit:
Studying the spread of the two groups provides a genetic snapshot of lager brewing in Europe during the past 600 years: one lineage is associated primarily with Carlsberg breweries in Denmark and others in what is now Czechoslovakia, while the other group localizes to breweries in the Netherlands, including Heineken.
Neato. The team’s full research results will be published tomorrow by Genome Research.
Alan – September 11, 2008 9:22 AM
Martyn has much more on yeast this morning over here.
Gavin Sherlock – September 11, 2008 11:07 AM
http://genetics.stanford.edu/~sherlock
Ack! I’m one of the two egg heads, and have to hold up my hands to say I missed the “hoppy” mistake in the New Scientist article when they sent it to me to look over. If anyone wants a copy of the paper, send me email (address on my website), and I’ll gladly send it.
Alan – September 11, 2008 11:51 AM
Hey! Hi Gavin. We love our eggheads as beer needs them. I will send you a request but I am sure I won’t understand it!
Hillary Sussman – September 11, 2008 3:21 PM
http://www.genome.org
Perhaps the “egg heads” at the New Scientist are oenophiles but I believe Drs. Dunn and Sherlock were correct in saying the variation in genetic architecture of the yeast strains is likely to “play important roles during fermentation of the wort substrate.”
Alan – September 11, 2008 3:35 PM
No doubt everything else they said was right. And there are no quotation marks around egg heads.
Hillary Sussman – September 11, 2008 3:51 PM
http://www.genome.org
“egg heads” [sic]…in the event any other eggheads are following this post.
Alan – September 11, 2008 5:01 PM
Thank you!
If we are going to be juvenile about such things (and, give this blog of mine is all about beer, I highly hope we are), I expect that we shall do it with such style and aplomb as you just displayed so well.
I bow to you, Dr. Sussman.
Alan – September 11, 2008 10:03 PM
Hey – Gavin Sherlock gave me another heads up: “As soon the as the pdf at Genome Research is available later today, I’ll send a copy. I need to read it myself to refresh my memory, as I’m going to be on NPR’s Science Friday for the last 20 minutes tomorrow!”
Here is more from the Science Friday site.
Hillary Sussman – September 11, 2008 10:26 PM
http://www.genome.org
Tonight Alan, in celebration of lager yeast genomes, I bow to you and your blog all about beer.
Ethan – September 12, 2008 4:01 PM
http://www.beerovision.com
Ach- just heard this on NPR, while skimming through my RSS reader and Lo! talk about synchronicity.
But thanks for saving me the short blog post!
That guy definitely knew more about yeast than beer!
Barbara Dunn – September 12, 2008 8:46 PM
http://genetics.stanford.edu/~bdunn
I’m the other egg head on the paper, and I personally bow down to Saccharomyces cerevisiae (and S. pastorianus too, of course!) for the great job they do in providing humankind with an amazing variety of tasty and useful products!
And to make a disclaimer: we are primarily yeast genome specialists, not brewers (although there is a new grad student in the lab who home-brews), and we hope that putting these studies into the public eye will allow those with better knowledge in the brewing arena to make even further insights about possible uses or inferences for beer making…