University of the Sciences, Lallemand Brewing, and L2C Partners Announce GY7B Sour Beer Technology License Agreement

University of the Sciences in Philadelphia (USciences), in partnership with L2C Partners (L2C), experts in technology transfer and commercialization, and Lallemand Brewing today announced the signing of a license agreement granting Lallemand Brewing the exclusive rights to commercialize its 100% natural, wild yeast intellectual property named GY7B.



The GY7B technology allows Lallemand Brewing to further expand its portfolio of innovative and creative solutions for the brewing industry. 

The global brewing industry is changing at a greater rate than most industry experts imagined. The domination of beer production and marketing by a relatively small number of large, global entities has been aggressively and successfully challenged in recent years by the rise of many thousands of smaller, artisanal or craft breweries across the mature and emerging beer markets.

This growth has been powered by a combination of passion for beer and a desire to present consumers with a vast array of beer styles. Underlying this shift in attitudes to beer has been a wider acceptance and appreciation by consumers of what had previously been considered niche beer styles, such as sour beers.

Matthew J. Farber, Ph.D. and his team at USciences discovered GY7B, a naturally-occurring yeast strain of a new species that allows sour beers to be produced through both lactic acid and alcohol production.  Through a partnership with Lallemand Brewing, GY7B will be produced as a stable, consistent dried yeast product, which can be shipped worldwide to all markets which value sour beer.

This yeast strain was isolated after examining hundreds of potentially useful strains and demonstrated very desirable ‘souring’ and sensory characteristics in pilot fermentations. Extensive studies at USciences demonstrated the efficacy and robustness of the strain and this was supported by work in the Research and Development laboratories of Lallemand Brewing. After consideration of the study results, including full sensory evaluation of the resultant beers, USciences, L2C Partners and Lallemand Brewing agreed that a dry form of GY7B would be of great interest to the brewing industry worldwide since dried yeast is easier to ship and is more shelf-stable than liquid yeast products.

“This technology could be a game-changer for those commercial and home brewers that wish to produce unique sour beers and yet wish to stay with a more ‘classical’ brewing process, developing flavors though primary and secondary fermentation without the need to use bacteria”

 said Sylvie Van Zandycke, Ph.D., Director of Sales and Marketing, Lallemand Brewing.
 
 
Dr. Farber emphasizes that GY7B abides by the Reinheitsgebot or German Purity Law; for the first time it enables brewers in Germany to produce sour beer without relying upon spontaneous introduction of bacteria

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