Chapter 2

The Brewing Yeast

Abstract  The concept of brewing science is very recent when compared with the
history of beer. It began with the microscopic observations of Louis Pasteur and
evolved through the last century with improvements in engineering, microbiol-
ogy, and instrumental analysis. However, the most profound insight into brewing
processes only emerged in the past decades through the advances in molecular
biology and genetic engineering. These techniques allowed scientists to not only
affirm their experiences and past findings, but also to clarify a vast number of links
between cellular structures and their role within the metabolic pathways in yeast.
This chapter is therefore dedicated to the behavior of the brewing yeast during fer-
mentation. The discussion puts together the recent findings in the core carbon and
nitrogen metabolism of the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and their fer-
mentation performance.

Introduction

Brewing yeasts are eukaryotic, unicellular, heterotrophic, and facultative anaerobic

microorganisms. During beer fermentation, they reproduce exclusively asexually
by budding. A single yeast cell can bud approximately 10–30 times (Powell et al.
2000) and each cell division will leave on the mother cell a scar (bud scar), the
counting of which indicates the cell’s age. A fully grown yeast cell has an ovoid
shape and measures around 5–10 µm in diameter.
The word “Saccharomyces” means “sugar fungus” (from the Greek
Saccharo = sugar and myces = fungus). The species “cerevisiae” comes from the
Latin and means “of beer.” As the name clearly suggests, in nature, yeasts from the
genus Saccharomyces are commonly found in sugary environments as in the sur-
face of ripe fruits. Throughout evolution, strains of Saccharomyces spp. have devel-
oped very sophisticated ways to survive and move around the globe. One example
is the ability to travel great distances in the guts of migratory birds (Francesca
et al. 2012). Moreover, yeast can also disseminate within crops in the body and

© The Author(s) 2015 11

E. Pires and T. Brányik, Biochemistry of Beer Fermentation, SpringerBriefs
in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15189-2_2