Kevin Verstrepen’s team (VIB-KU Leuven) is known across the globe for its research into yeast. Yeast cells are used in a wide range of applications, from beer, wine and chocolate to biofuels, chemical compounds and pharmaceuticals.

The research group has been working on yeast strains that produce beer with more intense flavor, that easily precipitate (for clear beer), that precipitate less (for cloudy white beer), that can break down complex sugars, that are more resistant to higher temperatures, or that can ferment faster and better.

Their expertise and extensive yeast strain collection and databank have laid the foundations for new beer flavors. This has been achieved through collaborations with large and small breweries in Belgium and abroad.

With support from AB InBev and about 20 other industrial partners, Professor Verstrepen has set up his own experimental brewery at the Kasteelpark Arenberg (Leuven) in 2017. In this state-of-the-art brewery, the team investigates yeast behavior in large volumes of beer. The brewery and the large-scale fermenters help to bridge the gap between the lab and industry, allowing to study fermentation in depth and test how their newly developed industrial yeasts behave. Several novel yeasts developed in the lab, including some producing superior aroma or showing more efficient fermentation, are already used for commercial beer production.

On top of that, Kevin Verstrepen and Miguel Roncoroni (VIB-KU Leuven) have published the very first scientific beer atlas: ‘Belgian beer, tested and tasted’. The scientists analyzed 250 Belgian beers using the latest technologies to measure various aroma compounds. These measurements, in combination with feedback from a trained tasting panel, yielded an unbiased, in-depth description and comparison of Belgian beers. Sales of the book immediately went through the roof.

The book maps 250 of the best Belgian beers on the basis of a scientific analysis by a large, trained panel of tasters. Kevin Verstrepen and Miguel Roncoroni tested the beers in their lab at the University of Leuven’s Institute for Beer Research and the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology.