Top Crop – The Science of Modern Brewing

Malt, yeast and hops all have important roles to play in different, cumulative sources of haze. Leaning on haze that forms in one way rather than another could make your beercraft significantly easier. It matters where the haze is coming from if you want to control it.

Modern brewing has embraced haze. How do we perfect it?

Some information and advice to keep your hazies hazy.

A more perfect system never existed for testing haze and flavor, thanks to the discovery of yeast’s hazy gene. In two brews differing only by the presence or absence of yeast-determined haze, blind tasters couldn’t pinpoint which was which. That begs the question, does haze contribute to flavor?

Media that gives a snapshot of actual diastatic activity covers gaps in current testing and adds more insight to diastatic cross-contamination screening. This is something new from Omega Yeast researchers.

Omega Yeast’s researchers tweaked standard LCSM so it alerts to the strains it had previously been missing. Just take a look at how standard LCSM and the optimized version perform differently. Scary!

Start at the beginning or skip to the end: the choice is yours!

There’s a new liquid thiol precursor derived from natural New Zealand ingredients. How big of a punch does it pack?

Continued experimentation leads to insight — read the latest findings.

When yeast leaves some of its discarded things around, it tends to pick up after itself (well, with a little encouragement). Then again, sometimes it just has too much on its plate. That’s where ALDC comes in. ALDC is like the Marie Kondo of diacetyl. It gets rid of what will later become a mess before it even starts. And it can be even more effective when yeast are enabled to produce it.

A quick runthrough on everybody’s favorite (or perhaps most feared) VDK.

A rundown on an enzyme that can help keep your beer clean.

A good head on a beer’s shoulders isn’t just pretty. Foam (and the carbonation that kicks it off) serves up the bouquet. It affects appearance and mouthfeel, too. Most beers are force carbonated, but capturing CO₂ through spunding can lead to a finer foam.

What I do have is a very particular set of skills…

Omega Yeast’s researchers can make diastatic strains non-diastatic. That means there are now a couple of ways to avoid the risks those strains posed, while keeping more of what you love about saison.

SLURP isn’t just a beer, but a project started at NoDa to best harness the use of thiol expression. It has since evolved into a means to make a more efficient juicy IPA.

Lance and Laura came away with some rich perspective, and not just on thiols. New Zealand is a beautiful place. They sat down with us to talk about it.

Juicy Bits has been described as the beer that launched a thousand hazies; WeldWerks, the house of haze. Thiolized® yeast is now part of their juicy toolkit.

Brewing all that beer probably has you feeling a bit peckish — dive into the world of food fermentation.

Round up your veggies! It’s time to get pickling.