Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Jurassic beer
Dork confessional moment: This is cool, both as a concept and that somebody turned it in to a quest:
A Cal Poly professor’s mission to turn a 45-million-year-old yeast into an ingredient for a beer has proven successful — and now he hopes to grow his operation locally.
Raul Cano, a Cal Poly biology professor, discovered the yeast in amber that came from Myanmar, which was previously known as Burma, while conducting research in the 1990s.
Apparently these little yeasties are different from their modern kin:
Despite initial skepticism from some about the taste the beer would produce, Cano says the flavor turned out surprisingly good and unique.
Critics have described the taste as one with lots of spice, resembling cloves, along with tinges of ginger and pineapple.
One thing that makes the yeast different is its genetic makeup — which allows the beer to finish with a desirable clear color instead of a cloudy resolution because of how the prehistoric yeast strain ferments sugars, Cano said.
My question: Were these "critics" on loan from the wine division? "Resembling cloves, along with tinges of ginger and pineapple"? Seriously?
9 Comments:
By 
Foxfier, at
Tue Jan 18, 05:50:00 PM:
By JPMcT, at
Tue Jan 18, 06:19:00 PM:
Clearly an example of Better Living Through Chemistry!
BTW...any reason why "focker" is the work verification for this post????
By JPMcT, at
Tue Jan 18, 06:21:00 PM:
...that's "word" verification.
sorry, I was rattled...
By Unknown, at
Tue Jan 18, 08:41:00 PM:
I can believe those are beer critics. These days, they're all into nuance like the wine critics. They're on about 'nose', 'lace', clarity, 'mouth feel', subtle flavors in the taste und zo weiter.
A friend of mine got into home brewing (he makes great beer) and started showing all those symptoms. Me, I just know whether it tastes good or not.
By Stephen, at
Wed Jan 19, 12:56:00 AM:
And soon the woolly mammoth may live again.
By 
, at
Wed Jan 19, 03:12:00 AM:
I wonder if reviving ancient organisms modern humans have never encountered would trigger severe allergies in some people.
By , at
Wed Jan 19, 06:32:00 AM:
Well, I don't know about allergies but I do know I already have enough problems with deer eating my flowerbeds. I don't need a wooly Mammoth problem on top of the deer.
The beer sounds good though.
By Banshee, at
Wed Jan 19, 11:21:00 AM:
And so man continues to domesticate the world's creatures. :)
Re: allergies, you usually don't get a sensitivity right away to something you've never had. It would take either a huge OD of Jurassic yeastie beasties, or several years drinking yeastie beasties.
That said, I suspect people with yeast allergies would want to sip prudently. They might get relief from their allergies, or they might not.
By , at
Fri Jan 21, 11:05:00 AM:
Of course Jurassic is anachronistic...40 million years ago is considered the Tertiary period. The end of the Jurassic was 95 million years earlier.
