Australia's Dark Yeast Spread

Vegemite is a thick dark brown Australian food spread made from leftover brewers yeast extract. Cyril Callister developed it in Melbourne during 1922.

Callister used autolysis on waste yeast from the Carlton & United brewery. He blended it with salt, celery and onion extracts.

Fred Walker's daughter Sheilah selected the name Vegemite after a naming contest. The person who coined it remains unknown.

Vegemite reached a production milestone of enormous scale.

Vegemite tastes salty, slightly bitter and malty, with umami from glutamic acid. It tastes like beef bouillon without the beef.

Vegemite is eaten on buttered toast or in sandwiches with cheese. The Port Melbourne factory makes over 22 million jars yearly.

Kraft Foods owned Vegemite from 1935 until 2017. That year Bega Group bought it for 460,000,000 US dollars.

In 2009 Kraft released iSnack 2.0, a milder Vegemite and cream cheese blend. Australians hated it and scrapped the name in four days.