The YEBN attends Biotech meets Beer event

This month our Communications Officer visited the ‘Biotech meets Beer’ event organised by the NorthWest Initiative at the Cloudwater Brewery in Manchester. The event was completely sold out and the bar area, located at the top level of the brewery, was completely filled with researchers and beer lovers. The event was a combination of talks from employees of the brewery and scientists from the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. 

In short talks, the scientists from the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology outlined how much biotech is involved in the development of new beers. Explaining key aspects of her work, yeast strain engineering, Prof. Daniela Delneri strongly focused on the application of her work in brewing beer.

During short breaks between the talks, the guests were handed out selected beers for tastings.  It was a great selection of beers: lager, IPA and gose, all with very different tastes. The tastings were accompanied by insights from brewery manager, Mark Cotterrell, on the origin, development and composition of the different beers.

Konstantina Giannakou, who works closely with the brewery in a Knowledge Transfer Network project, gave short examples of how breweries need biotech to develop new types of beer. She demonstrated the need for strain development and genetic engineering to improve the brewing process and to explore new compositions of flavours.

This event was a great highlight on how biotech directly influences industries and how the close exchange of findings in academia can lead to the fast and direct transformation of new technologies in the industry.