One of the most unusual benefits of being in Ireland from a Southern French PhD student’s perspective is not so much the rain and the pronounced taste for culinary oddities (some weird, some excellent) but the awesome trend towards a new age of craft beers (and I’m not mentioning the pillar of Irish pub culture). Looking at the increasing beer richness available in any decent pub/off-licence, I was inspired to combine two of my passions: beer-related stuff and phylogeny-related stuff. Despite an honourable attempt by J.L. Brown, I would like to discuss the three reasons why it’s imphopsible to build a true beer phylogeny. Admittedly one of the main reasons for this impossibility is the side effect of drinking any sugar rich (at least originally) drink that has been infected by Saccharomyces cerevisiae… But there are also three more theoretical reasons. Continue reading “Hopsolete Trees”