Field of Science

Ancient Beer

How do you recover from a weekend of athletic disappointments, or even a season of disappointments? Obviously you turn to that most wonderful of all depressants: beer. Via an esteemed botanical blogger MAT Kinase, comes a HT about a wonderful advertisement for a truly ancient beer, Fossil Fuel Beer, brewed supposedly using really, really old yeast, in fact 45 million year old yeast from the gut of a bee preserved in amber (fossilized tree sap). This is of course the premise of Jurassic Park, obtaining dino DNA from the gut of similarly trapped mosquito. The Phactor does not doubt that such things can be preserved, but that such preserved artifacts are still viable, i.e.e, capable of growing, does generate considerable skepticism. Sorry but even spores have a half-life for viability. Still you gotta love the name; has a great amber color and should have a long shelf life. For one thing the Phactor is going to stop worrying about that bottle of beer that's been in the back of the fridge for a year or so.

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