D. DRISCOLL (1); (1) Avery Brewing Company, Boulder, CO, U.S.A.
Yeast
Thursday, June 5 - 8:00 a.m.-9:45 a.m.
Level 4, Red Lacquer Ballroom
With the improved quality and falling costs of next generation
sequencing, new applications are being explored in fields such as
agriculture, medicine, and brewing science. The organism responsible for
the conversion of brewer’s wort into beer just so happens to be the
widely studied Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Avery Brewing Company is
leveraging next generation sequencing approaches to improve quality
control. Yeast strains are selected to ferment a given beer based on
many attributes, not the least of which are flavor and aroma profiles.
Often, within a brewery, the brewer will use multiple yeast strains for
the various beers they produce. Therefore, it becomes critically
important for brewers to avoid cross-contamination, not only from
potential beer spoiling bacteria, but also from various house yeast
strains. The most commonly used methods for catching yeast
cross-contamination involve collecting samples from the fermentation
tanks, plating the yeast, and then looking for the presence of multiple
strains based on colony morphology and appearance, which takes about 48
hr. With next generation sequencing, we identified strain unique DNA
fingerprints in the genomes of the six Avery strains. Using these
fingerprints we can devise a simple PCR-based assay for detecting
cross-contamination that takes only 3–4 hr. We are also exploring the
use of transcriptomics as a tool for addressing other quality control
issues related to yeast. Inexpensive next generation sequencing provides
a novel approach to quality control that has tremendous potential for a
variety of brewing applications.
Dan Driscoll graduated from Colorado State University in 2005 with a
bachelor’s degree in microbiology and from Oregon State University in
2007 with a master’s degree in applied biotechnology and molecular
biology. He worked for several Denver area biotechnology firms from 2007
until 2010, when he was unceremoniously laid off. He decided he would
much rather drink beer for a living than constantly subject himself to
biotech boom and bust bubbles, so he decided to explore a career in the
craft brewing industry. He has been putting his scientific background to
work for Avery Brewing Company since 2011 in an effort to help expand
upon and improve its brewery quality control.
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