Dear Colleagues,

The most important concepts driving our lives at present, apart from debt, climate changes, and the search for strategies to manage the energy crisis, are probably biodiversity and sustainability. Both are strictly linked to each other in all that is involved in new fermented food technologies.

The beer of today results from the reawakening, rather than the birth, of the craft beer industry. The phenomenon born in the United States is now global, and has been experiencing a real boom in recent years. Microbrewery producers are changing the beer market structure with greater beer diversity. Craft beer is characterized by using water, malt (basically from barley), hops and yeast and sometimes non-traditional ingredients, with the aim of reducing costs but especially to improve flavor and sensory characteristics with local raw materials.

The first revolution in the millennial history of brewing beverages sprung from the use of selected yeast culture: Saccharomyces pastorianus is often used for bottom-fermenting lager beers, while S. cerevisiae strains are involved in ale beers.

Other non-conventional yeasts and bacteria are potential sources of new beer strains that can contribute to the production of different beers with different flavors and qualities, not all attributable to sensory quality.

Strains capable of producing low alcohol content are under investigation because of the growing interest in non-alcoholic and low-alcohol beer. The addition of other local raw materials such as fruits or herbs during the fermentation process can increase the bioactivity of beer and improve the biodiversity. The use of waste materials from other food streams such as winemaking and the fruit juice or vegetable industries, as well as the omission of malted grains, are other areas of interest for the associated microbial interactions and the possibility of reducing direct costs.

This Special Issue will publish studies addressing new frontiers in Saccharomyces, non-Saccharomyces yeasts and bacteria, and their interaction with characteristic and non-characteristic ingredients in the brewing of the 2020s.

Dr. Luca Pretti
Dr. Margherita Rodolfi
Guest Editors

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• beer
• bioflavour
• non-saccharomyces yeasts
• craft beer
• non-conventional ingredients
• bacteria
• spontaneous fermentation
• raw materials