Capturing and Characterizing Wild Yeast for Beer Brewing

Abstract

Abstract Beer is typically made using fermentation with Saccharomyces cerevisiae or Saccharomyces pastorianus, which are domesticated brewing yeasts. Historically, wild, non-Saccharomyces yeasts have also been frequently used in mixed culture fermentations to provide interesting and unique flavors to beer. However, brewing using mixed cultures or by spontaneous fermentation makes reproducing flavors and beer styles extremely difficult. Here, we describe a pipeline from collection of wild yeast from plant material to the characterization and industrial scale production of beer using wild yeast. We isolated and identified wild yeast strains from Brisbane, Australia. Several isolates fermented efficiently at laboratory scale but failed to grow at industrial scale due to the combination of maltose and pressure stress. Systems biology showed that the synergistic metabolic defects caused by these dual stresses converged on amino acid nutrient uptake. Glucoamylase addition relieved maltose stress and allowed industrial scale fermentation using wild yeast. Our workflow allows efficient collection and characterization of diverse wild yeast isolates, identification of interventions to allow their use at industrial scale, and investigation of the genetic and metabolic diversity of wild yeasts.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Proteome Research, 2026 · DOI ↗