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Characterizing mixed culture beer

Peel, Henry
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2021
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Abstract
The increasing demand for novel and unique flavors in the craft beer industry has led to a rise in the use of Mixed Culture Fermentation (MCF). These cultures house complex microbial biomes that exhibit extraordinary metabolic diversity. Because of this, MCFs can produce beverages with unique profiles likely as a result of the biochemistry associated with their high heterogeneity. Using high-throughput DNA sequencing and bioinformatics it is possible to quantify the diverse conglomerate of microorganisms found in these cultures. There is potential to couple this information with metabolomics and transcriptomics to better understand, control and build cultures with desired characteristics. Such characteristics may include metabolites with pleasant aromas or flavors, pH adjustment, tolerance to environmental changes or fermentation speed. We analyzed 6 mixed cultures by using high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing and the DADA2 (Divisive Amplicon Denoising Algorithm 2) open source bioinformatic software package to identify unique sequences of genetic code to elucidate the makeup of the microbial communities. Our study revealed 122 different genera of Bacteria, 3 genera of Eucarya, and one genus of Archaea across the analyzed beer cultures. Lactobacillus acetotolerans was found to be the dominating strain of Bacteria, while the dominant eukaryotes were Brettanomyces custersianus and Brettanomyces bruxellensis yeasts. Only one genus of Archaea, Methanobrevibacter sp., was found.
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Creative Commons CC-BY License or the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC License.
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