Beer lovers can now enjoy their wildest drink yet thanks to a yeast carried by wasps. AB Biotek from Peterborough in the UK has launched Pinnacle Crisp Sour — a brewer’s ingredient made from Lachancea thermotolerans, a yeast found in the bellies of wasps.
The new strain was discovered in 2013 by researchers at North Carolina State University who were studying the yellowjacket wasp, Vespula sp. Wasp guts were known to be teeming with different microbes, but the team of microbiologists and brewing science experts saw the game-changing potential of L. thermotolerans, also present in grapes, for craft brewers wanting a sour-tasting beer. Its desirable properties include an ability to produce high amounts of lactic acid compared with other yeast species.
Credit: Anne Madden
Traditional beer uses just four ingredients: grain, hops, yeast and water. Hops add the distinctive bitter flavor, and yeast converts sugar from the grain into alcohol and carbon dioxide. But yeast also adds aroma and flavor. The brewer must control its metabolism to minimize bad flavors and intensify good ones; some also choose to add ingredients such as sweet potato to increase aromas.
The new yeast excelled at ethanol production, enabled flocculation — whereby small particles clump together to ensure beer clarity — and at the same time naturally released the soft tart flavor brewers seek. Without it, craft brewers need to add bacteria during a multistage process to create a sour beer, which is not desirable as it increases the risk of contamination.
“This yeast is producing lactic acid, which is that tartness of sourdough or yogurt. But on top of that we’re getting these aromas of fruit and flowers and almost touches of honey,” says Anne Madden, the former adjunct professor at North Carolina State who discovered the yeast and went on to co-found Lachancea, a biotech company that provides the brewing industry with GMO-free yeasts.
Researchers believe that there is mutualism between the yellowjackets and the yeast: the yeast produces sweet-smelling aromas that notify wasps and bees that sugar is present. “The yeasts benefit from getting dispersed to a sugar source,” says Madden. The yeast strains were removed from the wasp’s intestine by Madden and incubated on agar plates at 30 °C before being added to ferment beer.
Alcoholic beverages have been made with the help of wasps before. In 2012, Italian researchers found a yeast in the intestine of a wasp that could help produce wine. In 2023, researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam found that L. thermotolerans could help reduce the ethanol content of wine and make it more palatable. Scott Laboratories is now selling winemakers a wine yeast made with L. thermotolerans called Level2 Laktia, priced at $125.20 for 500g.
To make the fermentation ingredient Pinnacle Crisp Sour, its creators had to scale its production up to the amounts needed by brewers. To that end, Lachancea partnered with fermentation and yeast specialists AB Biotek, and the product is now being sold for $124 for 500 g.
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