Stuck or sluggish fermentations in home-made beers: Beyond the surface

In the last several years, the popularity of homebrewed beers has skyrocketed. However, this type of product is extremely vulnerable to microbial deterioration. Twelve homemade beers, some characterized by defects or stuck fermentation, were analysed by using a polyphasic approach encompassing culturomics and culture-independent techniques to better understand mechanisms that drive microbiota evolution throughout production and to highlight determinants responsible for crowning with success. Two sour beers, one apple-flavoured ale, two Italian grape ales, and seven standard ales were sampled. Microbiological characterization was obtained by plating on nine different media coupled with High- throughput sequencing analysis of fungal and bacterial communities by targeting ITS1–2 and the V3–V4 re- gions of the 16S rRNA, respectively. 2 7 TotalmicrofloraonPCAlargelyvariedamongsamples,rangingfrom