[HN Gopher] Amber Ale: Brewing Beer from 45M-Year-Old Yeast (2009)
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       Amber Ale: Brewing Beer from 45M-Year-Old Yeast (2009)
        
       Author : _Microft
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2022-12-28 08:45 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | brntsllvn wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | bwood wrote:
       | Fossil Fuels Brewing appears to be no longer in business. Anybody
       | know what happened to their yeast?
       | 
       | https://untappd.com/FossilFuelsBrewing
        
         | pseudosudoer wrote:
         | 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?
        
         | eklitzke wrote:
         | 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/
        
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