Barrel ageing of finished beers: Impact of wood species on microbial community composition, beer chemistry and sensory characteristics

The goal of this study was to test the hypothesis that wood species affects the temporal dynamics in microbial community composition, beer chemistry and sensory characteristics during barrel-ageing of conventionally fermented beer. To this end, two different wood species were investigated, including European oak (Quercus petraea and Quercus robur) and acacia (Robininia pseudoacacia ). Changes in microbial community composition and density were investigated using high-throughput sequencing of partial bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene and fungal internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) amplicons, and quantitative PCR (qPCR), respectively