F E AT U R E
Courtesy of Renaissance
amino acid valine.3 In all cases, these pro-cesses
have similar disadvantages as diace-tyl
rest and are not commonly employed in
commercial breweries.
Instead of trying to reduce VDKs after
their formation, it is more prudent to
inhibit VDKs from forming in the first
place by choosing a yeast strain that natu-rally
produces low levels of VDK precur-sors
during fermentation. For instance,
flocculant English-style ale Saccharomyces
yeast strains are known to generally
produce high levels of VDKs, so simple
replacement with a low-VDK strain could
be a solution.
Developing the right
Saccharomyces yeast
But what if it’s this specific flocculant
English-style ale strain that makes your
beer special? In that case, the develop-ment
of hybrid Saccharomyces yeast strains
through classical breeding and/or adaptive
evolution may be the solution. The origi-nal
flocculant English-style ale strain can
be hybridized with a low-VDK-producing
Saccharomyces yeast strain and then select-ed
for all the organoleptic characteristics
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