One of my favourite summer pastimes is enjoying a cold beer in a bar with friends after work. But not just any beer ' it has to be a lager. And I am not alone. With its crisp and refreshing profile, lager accounts for more than 90% of the global beer market. However, all lager beers taste quite similar, and the diversity of flavours and aromas is limited. This is mainly due to the small numbers of commercial yeast available for production. But what if we could break free from these constraints and create completely new and exciting flavours' Yeast are unicellular fungi that ferment sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. For centuries, humans have used yeast, consciously or unconsciously, to produce fermented foods, such as wine, beer and bread. The traditional lager yeast, Saccharomyces pastorianus, is a hybrid cross between two yeast species: S. cerevisiae (used for producing wine and ale beer) and S.eubayanus (a wild species found on trees). However, this long history of selective...
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