Home » The Daily Scan

'Taste My Yeast'

October 08, 2012

John Maier, a brewer at Rogue Ales in Newport, Ore., has created a new beer flavor using yeast collected from his 34-year-old facial hair, The Scientist reports.

Maier and the other brewers cultured and tested a yeast strain from nine hairs plucked from his beard, which he says he last shaved in 1978, with the help of White Labs, a San Diego, California-based distributor of brewer's yeast. This particular yeast strain performed like a hybrid between the brewery's house yeast strain, called Pacman yeast — which is used to make most Rogue Ales — and a wild yeast, The Scientist reports.

It also turns out, that this particular yeast strain results in a brew that's "clean in the flavor profile after it fermented, which is very unusual in the wild yeast" as well as a mild, fruity aroma with none of the harsh medicinal flavors sometimes produced by wild yeasts, The Scientist says.

It isn't clear exactly why the strain was only found on Maier's beard and nowhere else in the brewery, but at least one researcher suspect it might have found its way to his whiskers via a fruity dessert, The Scientist adds.

Rogue Ales hopes to release a beer based on the yeast, which they'll call New Crustacean, next spring.


Thank you I just lost my

Submitted by Biotreker on Mon, 10/08/2012 - 13:23.

Thank you I just lost my breakfast. I sure hope that any beer made from this yeast is required to be labeled with a big banner stating the origin of hte strain. Like the suggested requirement that certain chocolates be labeled with the warning, "Contains real unboned dead frogs..."

The "fruity dessert" was his

Submitted by donlon on Mon, 10/08/2012 - 18:08.

The "fruity dessert" was his wife!

I'm sure that if people knew

Submitted by Sceptic on Wed, 10/10/2012 - 02:42.

I'm sure that if people knew of the origins of the other yeasts used, they'd loose their apetite over a lot more beers. So let's publish those origins and rid the world of that horrible beverage that is beer.

That would make this beer not

Submitted by Sceptic on Wed, 10/10/2012 - 02:45.

That would make this beer not so much a beverage as a beaverage.