Scientists believe to find lager beer's ancestor

Lager beers were invented in Bavaria six hundred years ago, but until now the American scientists believe that they have discovered a specific kind of yeast essential to brewing lagers, according to media reports on Wednesday. The yeast used to brew lagers — a type of beer that’s brewed and stored cold — is known by the scientific name Saccharomyces pastorianus. An international team of researchers have discovered that the missing ancestor to lager yeast actually came from the forests of Patagonia, in South America. “Our collaborators sampled strains on five continents, and this was the one clear match,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Todd Hittinger. “They’re extremely prevalent in the beech forests of Patagonia, but we have not found them elsewhere.” The discovery offered up a mystery, which will likely always remain a mystery. While lager is generally believed to have been invented in the 1400s, Europeans didn’t reach continental America until 1492. Geneticist Gavin Sherlock, of Stanford University, said it's unclear how that progenitor would have gotten from South America to Europe since the Lager was invented in the 1400s but Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. So some experts suggest that there are the possibilities that the study is wrong, and that the origin of lager yeast actually came from Europe, but has since gone extinct or that the South American yeast arrived in Europe by some other route