The secret of Belgian beers unveiled?

Belgian beers are specials in many ways. The country holds an amazing variety of types of beers, from light white ones to the strong trappists, a particular sort of beers envied in the whole world. But one of  the main aspect is probably the centuries-old know-how of Belgians breweries.

Blonde and brown beers

Beer interest science

Scientists wanted to know more about the composition of this highly consumed drink. They decided to inspect the genome of an essential ingredient, that allows fermentation: yeast. The result, published in this month’s issue of Nature Ecology and Evolution, is really surprising.

Medieval yeast makes beers special

In fact, the yeasts used in certain types of beers are combining different DNA. «These yeasts are hybrids between two completely different species» says Dr. Jan Steensels from KU Leuven. The common ale yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the cold-tolerant wild yeast Sascharomyces kudriavzevii are forming a “medieval super yeast”.

“Funnily, no one, including the brewers, knew that they were using such special yeasts – it was a big surprise to everyone. Kevin Verstrepen, Professor at the University of Leuven. All the more so that this kind of hybridization is uncommon in nature because often not fertile. With yeast, however, things are different because they can reproduce a-sexually by making clones of themselves, like bacteria.

Centuries-old beer making knowledge

Indeed, these are the result of pre-industrial beer brewing. The wood barrel unique habitat created by audacious Belgians beer makers allowed these new species to prosper through the centuries.

As a result of that discovery, researchers now wish to create more hybrids in order to produce different variety of beers.

Indeed, Belgian beer did unveiled one of his secret. However, the success and greatness of this well-known drink, that makes an entire country proud, has surely still a lot of mysteries to discover.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqbuBusP-tU]

Constantin van Grevenstein

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