Comment by dekhn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dekhn | Hacker News Reader

Yeast was known as godisgoode (this is speculative) and one of the great moments in biochemistry history was the isolation of a single yeast strain, which led to the industrialization of beer production as well as many other cool things (some yeasts are great models for genetics).

"In 1883 the Dane Emil Hansen published the findings of his research at the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen and described the isolation of a favourable pure yeast culture that he labelled "Unterhefe Nr. I" (bottom-fermenting yeast no. 1),[10] a culture that he identified as identical to the sample originally donated to Carlsberg in 1845 by the Spaten Brewery of Munich.[11] This yeast soon went into industrial production in Copenhagen in 1884 as Carlsberg yeast no. 1.[12]"

It looks like the work by Pasteur and Hansen was continued here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geisenheim_Yeast_Breeding_Cent...

If there was ever a holy temple to the science of beer, it's https://www.carlsberggroup.com/who-we-are/carlsberg-research...

The study of biochemical fermentation is known as "zymurgy" or "zymology" and the enzyme (it's zymes all the way down) that carries this out is zymase (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zymase)

That industrialization of beer was a major step backwards; flavourless but cheap lager almost eliminated good traditional beer.

Modern beer, even the industrial lager you despise is much better that what 99% of people drank in the past. There is almost no bad beer, the standards for water quality and hygiene are high, the process and technology is well understood and we can replicate the same beer batch after batch, year after year.

Then why is an organisation based on opposition to that industrial lager, and improvement of beer quality more generally, probably the most major/successful/historically important single-issue consumer organisation, to the point that most other ones have modelled themselves on it?

Because, honestly, beer and wine and spirits tend to attract elite level snobs.

I’m not sure about the loss of flavor, but we have definitely seen waves of homogenization with macro beer producers. From what I’ve seen, this led to an explosion in regional and local microbreweries. There are lots of eclectic options out there nowadays.

I have had no trouble finding wonderful beers produced by industry. I think filtering, pasteurization, and the use of grains like rice, are the main sources of the lack of flavor.

That said, anecdotally, I did see a drop in quality of Pilsner Urquell when they moved from their traditional brewery (which had quite the ecosystem in the ceiling) to the newer one. Lots of folks like to say that the crazy stuff going on over the vats affects the flavor.

When did it move?

The best beer I ever had was draught Pilsner Urquell, sat outside the brewery in Plzeň circa 2000.

Whatever they were doing inside... oh man, Perfection. I'll never forget.

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