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Ditch the STA1 gene for more predictable saisons on draft.

Flavors are way more powerful than most people think. And some more than others. There’s a reason terms of endearment center on sweet things. Sweet things innately make us happy. Even as we age, and value flavor complexity perhaps most of all, it turns out that sweetness still has an outsized function. Not sweetness for sweetnesses sake, perhaps, but it does allow us to take in more flavor information overall, synergistically. ​“A spoonful of sugar…” indeed.

Though phenolic character and diastatic ability frequently appear together in brewing strains, they are not really connected at a genetic level. Take a look at which strains are just phenolic, which are phenolic and diastatic, and which are just diastatic. You might be surprised.

Here are two real life examples of tricky results from diastatic yeast contamination testing that threw brewers for a loop. One was a pretty expensive lesson. If you read it here, maybe it will never happen to you.

NA and LA beer has made huge strides in quality and availability in recent years, but large hurdles remain for creating it safely. Are you set up to manage risk and create tasty beer without alcohol?

NA beer has made huge strides in quality and availability in recent years, but large hurdles remain for creating it safely. Are you set up to manage risk and create tasty beer without alcohol?

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

Get a better grip on diastatic yeast to improve your protection from a potentially devastating cross-contamination.

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!

A brewing-themed crossword puzzle

There’s so much space for activities.

This improved recipe for LCSM, developed by Omega Yeast’s researchers, covers gaps you may not have been aware existed with standard commercial LCSM.

Omega Yeast’s R&D team gives phenolic strains’ fruity esters a tap take-over, making former Belgian and Hefeweizen strains into something clean and fruity, and a new tool for more modern styles.

A tart, tropical ale that doesn’t tie up the kettle.

Gram staining and catalase testing are lab tools that when considered together help you assess what threat a contaminant might pose. It’s not what each test tests for that’s the point really, it’s more about identifying characteristics that differentiate groups of bacteria, so you know what you’re likely to be dealing with.

There’s more than one way to get lactic acidity in beer. Let’s get brighter about Lactobacillus.

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.

Theme words fill the board entirely and do not overlap.

In this light and refreshing lager, delicate floral aromatics come from jasmine rice, and a thoughtful hopping regime adds hints of tangerine, fresh herb, and black pepper. All of that nuance is begging for superior foam to carry it all to the finish.