We are very happy to announce that Jan Steensels, a researcher at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology, will be doing a talk on farmhouse yeast at this year’s festival. Jan is part of the same team that did the famous 2016 paper which showed the first glimpse of the family tree of beer yeast.
He’s co-author of a new, big paper on farmhouse yeast (not published yet), which he will be presenting at the conference. In his own words: «In this talk, I’ll discuss the history and evolution of beer yeast in general and zoom in on our recent genetic analyses of 1760 yeast isolates from 44 different farmhouse cultures. This wealth of data not only offers a glimpse of brewing cultures untouched by industrialisation, but also sheds light on their origins and evolutionary history. Moreover, this newly uncovered biodiversity could also spark the next wave of beer yeast innovation.»