Amber Ale: Brewing Beer from 45M-Year-Old Yeast (2009) | Hacker News Reader

Amber Ale: Brewing Beer from 45M-Year-Old Yeast (2009)

wired.com

39 points_Microft6 comments

Fossil Fuels Brewing appears to be no longer in business. Anybody know what happened to their yeast?

I couldn't find any public statements from the brewery as to why they closed shop. A bit of snooping landed me on Raul's LinkedIn page (https://www.linkedin.com/in/raul-cano-00a4b6) where it doesn't seem to have the brewing company listed under his experience, so perhaps there was some falling out?

I don't know the actual answer to your question, but I do know that when you make beer from wild yeasts you get a really low alcohol content, like 1 or 2% ABV. There was an episode of Brew Masters^[1] that I remember watching where they collected wild yeast from a date tree in Egypt and used the yeast to make beer, and the ABV content was around 1% if I remember correctly. The brewer on that show was the head brewer at Dogfish Head, so if that's as good as he could get I doubt this company would be able to do much better. Modern alcohol is made using brewing yeast which has been selectively bred so that it has much higher alcohol tolerance, which is why we can make things like beer and wine with the alcohol percentages we're accustomed to today.

So this is pure speculation, but if I had to guess their 45M year old yeast can probably only be used to make a beer that's so watered down that it just isn't that appealing to a modern consumer.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1795111/

That show was great and inspired me to get into brewing. It was a great hobby and I highly recommend it, even if you're not a drinker. Friends and family will gladly drink any excess beer you make.

Epic. Just a great story.

> We called it Jurassic Amber Ale or T-Rex Lager or something, and it was pretty good," Cano says. It was served at his daughter's wedding

Plus the tasting notes later about spiciness.

Well, that seems to trump the belief or notion that DNA can't survive more than a million or so years without breaking down due to background radiation damage (cosmic rays, etc.).

My only knowledge of the subject rests on a few papers I've read. They suggest that DNA—even when stored under ideal conditions—couldn't survive the background radiation damage past this lenght of time. The argument goes that even though the radiation level may be miniscule it's the fact that it's incessant and persists for such a long time that the DNA ultimately succumbs.

Seems to me that now we have not only viable DNA but viable yeasts that have survived around 50 times those estimates and hints that DNA may even be 'recognizable' over double that time that we have a whole new ballgame—researching really ancient DNA may actually be a worthwhile exercise.

Anyone au fait with the latest research on this?

Wishful thought—perhaps some future researcher may actually find viable DNA from a dinosaur with an ichy back who scratched up a tree for relief and some of its skin rubbed up against some amber. :-)

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