Science & technology | Beer

A find by a student in Ireland plugs a gap in the history of lager

But the trail still leads back to Patagonia

Fermenting vessels at Tetley's brewery, Leeds, West Yorkshire, 1968. The Tetley family's links with the beer industry reach back into the 1740s when William Tetley was described as a maltster in Armley. His son William then expanded the business, and it was then passed to his son Joshua. The original brewery was opened on the south banks of the river Aire in Leeds in 1822 and by the late 2000s 200 million pints of beer were being brewed on the site every year. Tetley's were taken over in 1998 by Danish brewers Carlsberg. In 2008, citing falling demand for beer as the reason, they announced plans to close the Leeds brewery in 2011 and move production to Northampton. (Photo by Paul Walters Worldwide Photography Ltd./Heritage Images/Getty Images)

In 2011 one mystery in the history of brewing was replaced by another. The solved mystery was where the specialised yeast needed to make lager came from. The new one was how it had got to lager’s fons et origo, southern Germany—for the yeast in question had been found in Patagonia.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Cheers!”

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