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Ancient Yeast Used To Brew Modern Beer

Posted by timothy on from the turned-out-to-be-useful dept.

Kozar_The_Malignant writes "Yeast trapped inside a 45 million year old weevil, trapped inside amber has been extracted, activated, and used to brew beer. According to the report, the beer has 'a weird spiciness at the finish.' The brewer, Raul Cano, a scientist at the California Polytechnic State University, attributes this to the yeast's unusual metabolism. 'The ancient yeast is restricted to a narrow band of carbohydrates, unlike more modern yeasts, which can consume just about any kind of sugar,' said Cano. Cano brews barrels of Pale Ale and German Wheat Beer under the Fossil Fuels Brewing Co. label."

3 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Link to the brewer by DeltaStorm · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.fossilfuelsbrewingco.com/

    If you want to try it looks like you're going to have to go to California.

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    .sdrawkcab si gis siht
  2. wishful thinking? by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Informative

    If we can do this with other multimillion-year-old spores, seeds, and other "deep freeze"-states of living creatures, we might be able to bring back some of Jurassic Park without resorting to cloning.

    I suspect we'd be limited primarily to species that have a spore state. Bringing back old yeast is nowhere near as difficult as bringing back old vertebrates - yeast form spores to be able to sit out starvation indefinitely - I don't know many vertebrates that can do the same.

    Without a spore stage, the degradation of DNA and cellular machinery could be severe, and even bringing back a vertebrate encased in amber could be excruciatingly difficult (if possible at all).

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    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  3. They did the same thing in 1995 by Danny+Rathjens · · Score: 4, Informative
    By "they", I mean the exact same guys. They first revived bacteria from a bee's stomach in 1993, and this article from 1995 mentions,

    Cano and his colleagues claim to have built up a menagerie of 1500 ancient microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi and yeast, over the past three and a half years. A few weeks ago they toasted their success with beer brewed from dinosaur-age yeast, which they dubbed Jurassic Amber Ale (the first batch is described as "pretty bad", but there are hopes of better brews soon).

    So apparently the news is that it doesn't taste as bad anymore for some strange reason? marketing? ;)
    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14619792.500-they-came-from-40-million-bc.html