Synthetic yeast could make beer cheaper and stronger
Leave the beer alone, I don’t want GMO yeast.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scie ... onger.html
Yeast is already one of nature’s most amazing organisms. Seriously, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. If you want to improve beer, get those scientists working on replacement livers; that will improve beer by taking away the worry about drinking too much…
scientist should work on more hops, not more yeast.
[quote=“muddywater_grant”]Leave the beer alone, I don’t want GMO yeast.[/quote]What about GMO barley, corn, wheat, and rye?
I don’t want that either. And since I get mostly European malts, i.e. crisp and weyermann, I hope I am not dealing with them.
[quote=“muddywater_grant”]And since I get mostly European malts, i.e. crisp and weyermann, I hope I am not dealing with them.[/quote]Finland, England, Germany, and Hungary have participated in GMO barley trials but I don’t know the outcome of those trials or if the EU is going to accept GMO barley (with the modifications aimed at increasing amylase and glucanase). Here’s where I got that from, if you’re interested:
http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/database/plants/36.barley.html
Oy.
Bad enough that artificially produced GMO products are now practically dominating the food chain (and in the USA, typical of American bone-headedness, with no requirement to label GMO products as such). There is already evidence that GMO products could cause long term harm on multiple levels, and companies like Monsanto continue to spend millions of dollars to lobby against legislation that would require disclosure labeling (which begs the question: if such products are harmless, why do they fight so hard against disclosure???)
Really though I really can’t imagine any serious brewer wanting to use an artificial yeast. I certainly wouldn’t.
Synthetic yeast=synthetic beer? :shock:
I don’t even want to think about it.
As a life sciences professional: Awesome! A bit frightening, but I’m always amazed at the advances in the field.
As a homebrewer and great lover of beer and natural food: No, no, no, like totally Darth Vader NOOOOOOOO!
Something like this:
Gotta say, I don’t go for the knee-jerk “No GMO” thing. There’s some really interesting stuff there - preventing hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths per year[/url], for example, or cutting way back on the pollution caused by one of the world’s most pesticide- and fertilizer-intensive crops, or even just plain old run-of-the-mill [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humalog]keeping people with diabetes alive.
[quote=“bunderbunder”]Gotta say, I don’t go for the knee-jerk “No GMO” thing.[/quote]I don’t either, I base my opposition on knowledge of the issue - there are many good arguments against GMOs, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico for example, and very few valid reasons to use them (if you’re not a big ag company). We discuss plastic vs glass all the time and worry about leaching chemicals into our beer - why would you want to deliberately add something to your body that has had no long-term studies done (at least not published) to determine their impact over a lifetime of drinking beer?
Because the modified protein isn’t expressed in the kernel, and even if it is at some very low level we are precipitating it in the hot/cold break. Plus denaturing it with the boil. The stuff I’ve seen about the problems with GMO have been really weak.
This isn’t to say I’m all for it, mind you. I agree that monoculture crops are fraught with problems and causing trremendous damage to the ecosystem. But blaming GMO for this isn’t really fair, as they were doing it before. GMO has put a bandaid on one aspect, namely the runoff of the more toxic pesticides.
As for modifying yeast, I agree with the if it ain’t broke don’t fix it category. Its interesting that they are talking about engineering the entire genome though, this is a step beyond inserting a gene and having it expressed.
[quote=“tom sawyer”]Because the modified protein isn’t expressed in the kernel, and even if it is at some very low level we are precipitating it in the hot/cold break. Plus denaturing it with the boil.[/quote]How do you know what’s coming as far as GMO brewing grains - what if it’s not just the protein but a growth hormone that makes it through the brewing process (like BGH in milk and cheese)? What about all the chemicals they’ll be dumping on the grain because the grain will be immune to the ever-increasingly stronger pesticides and herbicides that are needed to combat every-increasingly resistant pests and weeds? The thought of which is enough to make me consider home distillation rather than brewing! 
Life’s too short to waste it worrying about avoiding stuff that might eventually kill ya if ya live long enough.
[quote=“tom sawyer”]Life’s too short to waste it worrying about avoiding stuff that might eventually kill ya if ya live long enough.[/quote]Used to think that, but things look a bit different to me now - hit 50 this year and decided that I might want this year to be the half-way mark rather than the 2/3 I was expecting.
Ya know, for the first 40 years of my life I believed that and lived like it. After 2 heart attacks and cancer, I’ve changed my mind.
Ya know, for the first 40 years of my life I believed that and lived like it. After 2 heart attacks and cancer, I’ve changed my mind.[/quote]
I hear you on that and I’m not saying that moderation in all things isn’t a virtue. When you’re young thats not a concept thats so easily grasped. At 51 I’m more careful than I was at 21, thats for sure.
Ya know, for the first 40 years of my life I believed that and lived like it. After 2 heart attacks and cancer, I’ve changed my mind.[/quote]
I hear you on that and I’m not saying that moderation in all things isn’t a virtue. When you’re young thats not a concept thats so easily grasped. At 51 I’m more careful than I was at 21, thats for sure.[/quote]
Steve Jobs was an everything natural health nut his whole life; dead at 56. (There’s some evidence that his all-fruit diet increases the risk of certain cancers, including pancreas.) My father was a 3-pack a day smoker, and borderline alcoholic; dead at 60. That’s just two people at the extremes, but there are many other examples. Most of the 90 year-old people I’ve met had generally healthy lifestyles, but lifestyles which included a few vices. They tried to do right, but didn’t obsess when they didn’t. The more I learn about health and longevity, the more I think no one REALLY has a clue.
Personally, I think abstinence and indulgence are like acid and base. Too much of either will burn you.
synthetic and genetically modified are not the same thing
and frankly I dont think we could feed the population with out geneticall modified grains and meats. we could never grow enough.
when some says synthetic it should mean “made by man, or, from man made ingredients.” as far as i know man has not created a living cell but has only copied or cloned them.
this being said…there are some things that are best left to the original. like an elvis song and yeast.
I could live for 100 years… if i gave up everything that made me want to live 100 years :lol:
not that i necessarily agree with that, but i like the quote. forgot where i heard it…
