From America’s Budweiser to Germany’s Munich Helles, lager beer is a staple beverage across the world. Ask any beer aficionado about the difference between a lager and ale, and if he’s worth his salt he will tell you that it’s all about the yeast. While brewers have long known that lager uses a special kind of yeast, exactly what makes this yeast different has long been a mystery. Chris Todd Hittinger, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is hoping to shed some Read more [...]

Experts report that, in light of summer, athletes should be careful to avoid hyponatremia, a condition that comes from consuming too much liquid, You probably remember from trivia night at the bar that the ancient Sumerians were the first to brew beer – some 6,000 years ago. But what about lager? It’s a bit harder to determine, but thankfully genetics is able to help. With state of the art sequencing, researchers were able to track the yeast used for making popular lager to the German Read more [...]