Lance Shaner
Setting up Successful Fermentations: Yeast Attenuation and Wort Fermentability
The attenuation of a given yeast strain is a relative range because it can be heavily influenced by the wort fermentability or the composition of sugars extracted during the mash. On the hot side, we’ll overview how the brewer can manipulate wort fermentability in the mash and “set up the dinner plate” for a given yeast strain. On the cold side, we’ll dive into how different yeast strains can be used to consume more or less of the wort sugars and best practices to avoid attenuation problems stemming from poor yeast performance. We’ll apply this baseline knowledge and tackle more advanced technical challenges such as limiting ABV in NABLABs and targeting attenuation in dry-hopped beers.
Lance Shaner, Head of Chicago Plant Operations, Omega Yeast Labs
Lance Shaner is the co-founder of Omega Yeast Labs in Chicago, IL, which has been operating since 2013. He earned a B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from the University of Texas – Houston. His doctoral research focused on the role of the molecular chaperone Sse1 in the stress response of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (a.k.a. brewer’s yeast). After graduate school, he took a slight detour and obtained a J.D. from the University of Houston. This provided an opportunity to move back to the Midwest where he practiced law as a Patent Attorney for Marshall Gerstein & Borun LLP in downtown Chicago for four years. Eventually, he combined his passion for craft beer with his expertise in yeast biology to co-found Omega Yeast Labs. Today, Omega Yeast provides yeast cultures and lab services to breweries around the world, staying at the forefront of brewing innovation. The Research & Development program at Omega Yeast has spearheaded the use of CRISPR to enhance the ability of brewing yeast to minimize off flavors and increase desirable yeast-derived flavors and aromas.
