LANCE: My name is Lance Shaner.
I'm the co-owner and co-founder of Omega Yeast in Chicago. I'm going to talk a little
bit about our Thiolized Yeast Series. These are four different strains that all have an enhanced
ability to release these aromatic thiols from precursor forms that are found naturally in malt
and hops. In this kind of precursor form, they're inert and not volatile and you can't smell them.
It takes a specific chemical reaction to release those so that we can smell them. The particular
style that these strains can release is called 3-SH, and in very low abundance it gives you
aromas of passion fruit and grapefruit peel -- a very tropical sensation that you get from this.
And again, this is from precursors that are naturally found in barley malt and hops. So,
it allows for enhanced bio transformation and more tropical aromas in your beers.
The first strain released in the Thiolized Series was called Cosmic Punch. This is
based on our British V strain, which is very popular for Hazy IPAs. And,
that used a natural yeast enzyme called IRC7, where we essentially just overexpressed it,
which is just a fancy term for making more of this enzyme so that it can access these thiol
precursors in malt. It's a balanced strain in that it doesn't do this in too much abundance;
it's not too over the top. So, you can use it to kind of add this top note of tropical aroma to it.
One of our more recent releases is called Helio Gazer and it's also based on the British V strain,
but it uses an enzyme that is much more potent and much more able to release more
of these thiol precursors. When you really want it to stand out in a heavy hop load,
this strain can put out upwards of five- to ten-thousand parts per trillion of 3SH,
which is hundredfold over that aromatic threshold for that compound. So,
it really helps it stand out in an already aggressive, aggressively hopped beer.
Star Party uses that same enzyme that Helio Gazer uses,
but the strain background in there is Chico or what we call our West Coast Ale
I. That allows you to get more of a West Coast type IPA with a nice clear beer,
but also enhance these tropical aromas through that biotransformation of thiol precursors.
The last of the Thiolized Series is called Lunar Crush and that is a lager strain. It is based on
our Mexican Lager strain and allows for you to make really off-the-wall lagers . If you do just
a simple, for example a Pilsner recipe, you get something that tastes and smells nothing like
a Pilsner. It's just bursting in these thiol aromas that really makes it almost more akin
to a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. It's just a very, very different beer. Or you could use
that to make a Cold IPA or an IPL, something like that to give a new twist on those styles.
I think one of the most interesting things about thiolized yeasts is that they take most of their
precursor from malt. Most people think of hops as being the source of all of our fruity aromatics,
and obviously that's true in most cases. But, in terms of thiols,
those thiol precursors are actually much more abundant in malt than they are in
hops. Hops have them too, and you can use those to enhance it. But it's really the
malt that is bringing the majority of this precursor and is responsible for giving you
all this tropical aroma when you use it in conjunction with these thiolized yeasts.
Interestingly, it's barley malt specifically that seems to be very, very abundant -- have
very abundant levels of precursor. And we found that oats and wheat, for example, do not. So,
this kind of affords opportunities or it's at least something to be aware of. If you want to
cut back on the amount of thiol output, for example, you can boost the amount of wheat
you have in your recipe or the amount of oats. Or if you want to be careful about not stunting the
amount of thiol you can release into your beer, then you'd want to steer clear of oats or wheat.
One of the interesting things we found in our research was that since hops have some
of these precursors, if we put the hops in the mash we'd get some amount of conversion to the
precursor form that the yeast can handle. So, if you add a little bit of hops to your mash,
you can actually result in a higher thiol output because those thiol precursors are
in a form where they're soluble and not volatile. So, they'll survive the mash, survive the boil,
and be accessible to the yeast so that the yeast can release these enzymes. It's really
a very kind of counter-intuitive idea that you can add hops to the mash in order to increase
the hop aromatics in the end. Now, there are some caveats there. We would not recommend using very,
very expensive hops like Galaxy or Mosaic because all the old rules apply in that
you're still going to be boiling off and losing all these other aromatics that they're known for.
So, you want to choose the hops that you use for mash hop carefully. Because another thing is you
do get some amount of IBUs for it. The metric we use for that is about 30 percent of the IBUs that
you would expect if you use those same amount of hops in the boil. Consequently, there are
certain hops that work really, really well. Saaz, for example, is loaded with precursors and also
tends to be pretty low alpha acid, so you can be a little more aggressive with Saaz, for example, in
the mash. And we've gone upwards of the equivalent of two pounds per barrel, which is a fair amount;
that adds about 18 to 20 IBUs, but it really bumps up the amount of precursor available to the yeast.
Our research is ongoing into thiols because we found all sorts of interesting things that we
really couldn't predict really got into this. There seems to be maybe a little bit of masking
going on when you have heavily hopped beers. It can be harder to really hone in on those
thiols. It gives you kind of a top note of, you know, some sort of tropical sensations that you
weren't getting without using these strains. But that's in contrast if you do a very simple recipe.
For example, a blonde ale with Star Party is going to taste nothing like a blond ale;
it's going to taste like it was dry hopped or some really weird, exotic hop. So, there's all sorts of
interesting sensory science going on there, and that is certainly not fully understood.
And there are some interesting things going on with whirlpool hopping. We found that
with Cosmic Punch specifically, if you do heavy amounts of whirlpool hopping,
you can actually turn down the amount of thiol that's released. So, whirlpool hopping with T-90
pellets is something you might want to avoid if your goal is to put out a lot of thiols. Now,
again, that's only slightly affecting. It's still going to be above threshold. This is
just a tip for if your goal is maximum amount of thiol expression. And, we see less of this issue
if we use alternative hop products that don't have plant material like Cryo Hops, things like that.
I think what's most exciting about these yeasts is it's taking advantage of precursors that
have always been there. I mean, if we had been measuring these over the years, we'd have been
able to measure thiol precursors in the beer, but they were always inert. We've provided these tools
that really give us access to tropical aromas where you absolutely would not have expected them,
you know, in the malt, for example. You just give them the right yeast that has an enzyme
that's able to convert those precursors, and it opens up these really exotic flavors.
We're really excited to have the Thiolized Series at Northern Brewer,
and we think it's going to open up some really interesting possibilities for your brewing.