Excitement for the sour beer microbiome at the World Brewing Congress

Once every four years, the greatest athletes in the world gather to compete for glory. 

At the exact same time, the American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC), Master Brewers Association of America (MBAA), Brewery Convention of Japan (BCOJ), European Brewers Convention (EBC), and Institute of Brewing and Distilling (IBD) get together for a joint conference on all things about humanity's favorite beverage...and they consume those beverages in large quantities...

This World Brewing Congress was in Denver, CO, and I got to spend 5 days representing Indiana University and Wild Pitch Yeast. I gave a talk on a bottle conditioning paper that my lab published in collaboration with the Upland Brewing Company, and I also discussed wild yeasts as part of a yeast workshop. I made a lot of great contacts, drank a lot of excellent beer, and enjoyed Denver.

People were excited to hear about our burgeoning sour beer microbiome project, and you may see some of them pop up on Experiment.com in the future with projects of their own. I was pleased to see that one of our backers, Scott Britton, is working on a similar project to map the hop microbiome.

Jeff and I are preparing to submit some pilot experiment samples for next-gen sequencing analysis in the next week or two, and we'll be sure to keep you updated.

Cheers!

Matt