{"id":3535,"date":"2025-03-21T06:55:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T11:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/suigenerisbrewing.com\/?p=3535"},"modified":"2025-03-21T06:56:01","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T11:56:01","slug":"wild-brettanomyces-project-2024-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/suigenerisbrewing.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/21\/wild-brettanomyces-project-2024-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild Brettanomyces Project – 2024 Update"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My longtime readers will know about my Wild Brettanomyces Project – my multi-year quest<\/a> to try and identify the environmental niche of Brettanomyces<\/em> – e.g. the place where it lives in the wild. 2024 was no exception to this, so it’s time for a quick update. As a quick reminder, Brettanomyces<\/em> are often found in large numbers in industrial beverage contexts (breweries, wineries, etc). But, oddly enough, Brettanomyces <\/em>doesn’t appear to live on any of the inputs for these industries – its not on grains, or on grapes\/other fruits, nor carried by insects, or found in any of the other usual locations we find other species of wild yeasts. This has made finding new strains of Brettanomyces <\/em>– or avoiding it in industries where it’s an issue – difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several years ago I happened across a series of papers<\/a> looking at the rhizosphere’s of various plants – e.g. at the commensal bacteria and fungi that grow around a plants roots and help the plants survive. Rhizosphere’s are not an accidental thing, and plants actively promote the growth of beneficial organisms by secreting sugars and other nutrients from their roots to feed this community. And guess what I found in several papers, often in the long lists of identified species hidden away in the supplemental figures…Brettanomyces<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then I have been pursuing this possibility with decidedly mixed results. While I am often able to find Brettanomyces<\/em>-like cells (in terms of appearance) in rhizosphere isolates, purifying these have been challenging as another common wild yeast – Debaryomyces <\/em> – readily outgrows everything else in the culture. So while I’ve had a few small successes<\/a>, meaningful identification of Brettanomyces<\/em> in rhizosphere samples still eludes me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other parts of this series:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n