Seems some genetic diversity was sorely needed and recently found:
The author loses most of his credibility in the first sentence of the article. He obviously hasn’t spent much time in the Czech Republic or Franconia (or McMinnville for that matter).
While I think the research being done is interesting and important from a brewing standpoint, but until they show that they can get new flavors and aromas out of a yeast (the one he mentions, clove, is a feature of a number of yeasts currently available), it is just research.
Scientific American has no credibility? Tough crowd…
So Roberto, do you think Lager beer is boring? Is a racy pale lager in Prague boring (don’t count the stuff we get here, distance and time are not a beer’s friend)? Is a Schwarzbier in Kulmbach boring? Are Rauchbiers boring? We make a lager that is hopped with Cascade hops. I don’t think it’s boring, and neither do the folks at RateBeer.com, who rate it the second best amber lager in the world.
Certainly there are boring lagers because the “Big Three” beers are called lagers (though their fermentation practices are closer to ales than real lagers). I just found it to be a trite and uninformed comment.
No, I LOVE good lager, particularly this one at the moment:
And, I used to ride my bike TO Bamburg JUST to drink Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen when I lived in Germany.
But I found the article intriguing…
You real think it’s junk science even in Scientific American?
Roberto,
I don’t think it’s junk science, but I think that the premise of the article is junk. These newly discovered Patagonian yeasts may provide a number of advantages over current brewing yeast, and those need to be explored. The reason for doing so is not because lagers are boring, or that there is anything wrong with the lager yeasts we’re currently using.