suregork
Well-Known Member
As many of you are probably aware of, lager yeast or Saccharomyces pastorianus, is actually a hybrid between S. cerevisiae and the 'recently-discovered' S. eubayanus. Thanks to the availability of strains from both species, it is now possible to create new lager yeast, through the interspecific hybridization of selected strains of both parents. This is exactly what has been done at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, where they created new lager yeast hybrids by mating a strongly flocculating ale strain sourced from a brewery in the UK with the type strain of S. eubayanus. The resulting strains fermented faster, attenuated higher, and flocculated better than both parent strains during a fermentation at 12 °C. The resulting beers had aroma profiles similar to that of the parents. The hybrids also inherited beneficial properties from the parent strains, such as maltotriose use and cold tolerance. This opens up the possibility to vastly expand the range of lager strains available to brewers (which is currently limited to basically two evolutionary groups). In theory, basically any ale strain could be hybridized to create a lager-version of it (in practice it isnt quite that straight-forward). Also, the technique benefits from the fact that no genetic engineering is involved at all. Im hoping to see the amount of yeast strains available to brewers increase rapidly the upcoming years 
Here is a link to the recently published (and open access) study:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10295-015-1597-6
And a link to a short write-up on my blog (disclaimer: yes, I am involved in the study):
http://beer.suregork.com/?p=3626
Here is a link to the recently published (and open access) study:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10295-015-1597-6
And a link to a short write-up on my blog (disclaimer: yes, I am involved in the study):
http://beer.suregork.com/?p=3626
