10 The Weirdest and Gross Beer Gimmicks
Weird and Gross Beer Gimmicks
1. Yeast Pulled From a Beard
Wild yeast pops up in all kinds of places, but yeast pulled from a man's beard might just be taking things a hair too far. Rogue Ale thought the concept was worth exploring, however, which is why they jumped at the chance to produce Beard Beer using yeast from Brewmaster John Maier's beard, which he had been growing since 1983. It had been exposed to the brewing of over 15,000 beers, which doesn't necessarily make it sound like a great idea regardless.
2. Vagina Beer Made From A Model’s Vaginal Yeast Set To Hit The Shelves
No, it’s not an April Fools — Polish brewery Order of Yoni is currently raising money to make the world’s first craft beer containing vaginal lactic acid (freshly swabbed from a model, no less).
The beer, Bottled Instinct, contains “femininity” and “women’s instincts” (whatever they are), and is brewed with yeast (or “Yoni”) from a specially selected woman.
The lucky lady giving up her, er, ingredient, for the beer is Czech model Alexandra Brendlova as she apparently has “all the desired instincts we wanted to frame” in our “ark of instincts” — that’s a bottle to you and me.
After a lengthy search, Alexandra was chosen as “the kind of female whose pheromones will stay with you for the following week”. Right.
Order of Yoni are currently raising money on IndieGoGo to start producing the sour-tasting beer and are offering generous donors the chance to have a beer specially made from their girlfriend’s vaginal swab. So romantic.
As for the technology, Order of Yoni vaguely claim to “isolate, examine and prepare lactic acid bacteria from [a] vagina”.
3. Bull Testicles
Alright, it’s official: we have released a hand-canned version of our world-famous Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout.
This is another seminal moment in our 25 years of small-batch liquid art.
As you may recall, RMOS Stout made its debut during last year’s Great American Beer Festival. The draft-only beer earned press and consumer interest from around the world and led to long lines for the beer at our GABF table.
The new hand-canned version of Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is being sold in unique twopacks of labeled 12-ounce cans. It’ll be available at select retailers in our Denver distribution area.
For beer lovers outside of the Denver area, a limited amount of the beer will be available through the www.letspour.com web site starting March 11.
We’re certain that this is the ballsiest canned beer in the world. We believe it’s also the nation’s first twopack of cans.
The beer is made in tiny 8-barrel batches (instead of our usual, already small 20-barrel batch) and is the first in our new Even Smaller Batch Series of beers. (A barrel of beer equals 31 gallons and two standard 15.5 gallon kegs.)
Head brewer Andy Brown developed the beer’s recipe.
A meaty foreign-style stout, Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is made with Colorado base malts, roasted barley, seven specialty malts, Styrian Goldings hops, and 25 pounds of freshly sliced and roasted bull testicles.
Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is an assertive, viscous stout with a rich brown/black color, a luscious mouthfeel and deep flavors of chocolate, espresso and nuts. The beer sports a savory, umami-like note and a roasty dry finish.
Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is 7.5% ABV and 3 BPBs. (That’s balls per barrel.)
The beer came to life last fall after the enthusiastic response to our 2012 April Fools Day spoof video in which we claimed to have made the beer. I got the video joke idea and wrote up the script after sampling a traditional oyster stout (made with ocean-grown kind) by the fine folks at Odell Brewing.
Note the stellar performances by Andy, our former brewer Brad Landman (he’s now at Vine Street Pub) and the rest of our staff. Gabe Dohrn (a part-time Wynkoop staffer and founder of Avavision Media) was the video wizard behind the camera and did the exceptional edit job for the piece.
Folks who got the video joke thought it was a hilarious idea. Many of those who missed the joke were eager to try the beer. So we figured the only way we could top the humor of the video and make those stout drinkers happy was to actually create the beer.
We canned approximately 100 cases of the beer in this initial canning run of Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout. The beers are hand canned on a table-top canning machine from Cask Brewing Systems.
We’ve packaged RMOS in blank, unprinted aluminum cans that we label with a two-part label akin to those used on glass bottles. This method enables us to produce super-small batches of canned beer and avoid the 95,000 can minimum for painted cans from our can supplier.
Look for these nutty new twofers in our best Denver area stores. Have a ball!
4. On Iceland’s dung-smoked whale testicle beer
Fin whale testicles may not seem like a natural ingredient for, well, anything. But Dagbjartur Arilíusson, owner of the Steðji microbrewery in Iceland, disagrees: Whale testicles—actually, whale testicles smoked with sheep dung—are the signature ingredient in his seasonal beer, Hvalur 2. It’s all part of the brewery’s passion for ingredients unique to its far corner of the world.
(Teroes) How did you come to own a brewery on a farm in the Icelandic countryside?
(Arilíusson) We started in 2012 because we own this farm in Borgarfjörður [West Iceland] and we wanted to have a job near us at home. We were thinking outside the box. Beer is a passion, and German beer making inspires me, so we connected with a German brewer in Iceland because we were interested in the German purity laws.
What’s special about the beers you brew?
We have four kinds of beer—dark, lager, ale and strawberry fruit beer. We also have seasonal beers like our Christmas beer that uses raw licorice as an ingredient, our October beer that includes red barley and pumpkin seeds, and our Easter beer that is brewed with cocoa and Icelandic seaweed. The theme is always to include something Icelandic.
You also brew beer made from fin whale testicles…
We started last year with our first whale beer, Hvalur 1. The health department didn’t want us to produce it at first, but we were allowed to. The beer used whale meal as an ingredient, and it was something new for Iceland. It sold out almost immediately. This year, for Hvalur 2, we wanted to keep the concept, but use a different whale ingredient. We decided to use fin whale testicles.
How, exactly, do you brew with whale testicles?
We get the testicles frozen from the whaling company, and we have a licensed butcher chop it up for us to use. The testicles are cured according to an old Icelandic tradition. The testicles are salted, and then smoked with sheep dung. A whole testicle is used in every brewing cycle, and then the beer is filtered and pasteurized. We put a lot of effort into this, and it’s a long process.
What’s the beer’s connection to Iceland’s annual food festival, Thorrablot?
We wanted to create a true Thorrablot atmosphere that celebrates traditional Icelandic food. Every winter, Icelanders gather to eat traditional food that sustained our ancestors for generations. This is very popular here in the countryside, and we wanted the beer to be released at the same time of the festival. The dishes we eat include boiled sheep heads, liver sausage, ram testicles, fermented shark, wind-dried fish, smoked lamb meat, and blood pudding. We thought that Hvalur 2 would fit in well with Thorrablot by using an ingredient that is a little different.
Does the criticism from whale conservationists bother you?
It actually brings more attention to the beer, which is a positive thing. Most of the protests come from people outside of Iceland. People have to remember that the fin whale is not endangered in the North Atlantic, and Iceland is known for sustainable fishing and setting quotas for our whale hunt. There’s actually a lot of demand for our beer to be exported, but there are laws that limit which countries can import it because of anti-whaling laws. The beer will sell out in Iceland, and people from other countries want a taste.
Any new beers on deck?
We’re always thinking of how to use different Icelandic ingredients in our beer. It started with beers that use Icelandic seaweed and whale ingredients, and we’re thinking about other ideas like including Icelandic moss in a beer; we’re experimenting right now with an ale that has a lemon flavor.
5. Packaged in a Dead Squirrel
Scottish beer-makers BrewDog are thanking fans who have helped to raise £19million by sending them a bottle of the world’s strongest beer wrapped inside taxidermy road kill.
The top ten devotees in the US who have invested more than $20,000 (£16,000) in the firm are set to receive a bespoke bottle of The End of History, a 55 per cent ABV blonde Belgian ale infused with Scottish nettles and juniper berries.
The super-strong beer was first created in 2010, when only 12 bottles were made. The money raised will go towards building a brewery in Columbus, Ohio, where a ban on brewing beer above 12 per cent has been lifted.
BrewDog invited fans to claim a share of the company in early 2016 when it launched Equity for Punks IV.
6. DOCK STREET WALKER: THE SMARTEST BEER YOU'LL EVER DRINK
Our favorite brain candy? AMC’s The Walking Dead. We paid tribute to the show with a mind-boggling brew that we dubbed Walker - in honor of the type of person who is likely to love it.
Walker, an American Pale Stout, was brewed with substantial amounts of malted wheat, oats and flaked barley for a smooth, creamy mouthfeel. Fuggle hops provide delicate, earthy notes while the cranberries create a sinister bloody hue, adding a slight tartness.
The pre-sparge-brain-addition (yes, you read that right) provides this beer with intriguing, subtle notes of smoke.
We fielded calls from Philadelphia to Asia requesting bottles of the bubbly brew, and were covered in Time Magazine, Uncrate, and Business Insider. Oh, and we also got a ring from Walking Dead producers, who were also keen for a bite, er, sip.
Watch former Head Brewer Justin Low and brewer Sasha Certo-Ware discuss the making of Walker with Pretentious Film Majors (their words, not ours!)
7. Danish Brewers Are Making Beer With Festival-goers' Urine
Danish beer-makers used more than 50,000 liters of urine from last year's Roskilde music festival to brew their Pilsner for this year’s harvest, The Local reported.
The Danish Agriculture and Food Council dubbed the process "beercycling" and adopted it in an effort to be more eco-friendly.
“Just as we have seen shops sell goods that would otherwise have been thrown out, beercycling allows us to recycle a product that is normally flushed down the drain,” Karen Hækkerup, CEO of the council, told The Local.
Usually breweries use animal urine to fertilize barley fields, but this year the Nørrebro Bryghus brewery instead opted for human urine.
“When it comes to circular economy, Danish farmers are some of the best in the world. If you can brew a beer with urine as fertilizer, you can recycle almost anything,” Hækkerup said.
Denmark isn’t the only place to have experimented with urine as fertilizer. As beer is a diuretic, causing people to urinate frequently, researchers in California partnered with Sudwerk Brewery Co. to collect urine from patrons of the brewery in the summer of 2016.
UC Davis’ researchers hope to expand their project to include local farmers in a larger fertilizer recycling program.
Urine contains nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus — all necessary nutrients for plants — and unlike feces, urine carries no risk of passing on diseases such as salmonella, the Scientific American reported.
"Agricultural and health organizations should encourage people to use human urine as a fertilizer," wrote Håkan Jönsson, a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, who has studied urine recycling for 15 years.
While there is no actual urine in the beer, “golden pilsner” will likely never have the same connotation again.
8. Dogfish Head’s Celest-Jewel-Ale Is Made With Lunar Meteorites
Now here’s a beer that’s literally out of this world. Celest-jewel-ale, a small-batch beer concocted by the geniuses at Milton, Del.-based brewery Dogfish Head, is made with real lunar meteorites.
Here’s how it’s possible: The meteorites (procured from engineering firm ILC Dover, which makes spacesuits for NASA) are crushed into dust and steeped like tea in the brewery’s Oktoberfest lager.
9. Elephant dung beer sells out almost immediately
We've seen beer brewed from everything from facial hair to bull testicles. Now you can add half-digested coffee beans picked out of elephants' dung to the list.
Recently Japanese brewery Sankt Gallen introduced Un, Kono Kuro, a brew made from coffee beans that have passed through an elephant (there is no actual poop in the beer)--a technique that breaks down proteins in the coffee bean, giving the beer a smooth, earthy flavor.
According to RocketNews24, Sankt Gallen sold out of the brew on the first day of its sale, which was on April Fools' Day (no joke).
So how did it taste? Apparently, pretty good, according to RocketNews24.
"The combination of bitter and sweet stayed fresh and lingered in my head. It was a familiar aroma that accompanied me through the entire beer."
The pricey beans, called Black Ivory, comes from Thailand’s Golden Triangle Elephant Foundation, the same people that created the $50 cup of elephant dung coffee. Needless to say, you won't find Un, Kono Kuro in too many U.S. supermarkets.
10. The East Bay beer that’s 45 million years old
Around 45 million years ago, a leaf became ensconced in a small chunk of Burmese amber. It was a mundane enough event at the time, until the piece fell into the right hands.
Today, through the scientific maneuverings of two very dedicated molecular biologists and a rather adventurous East Bay brewer, microscopic cultures within the amber are being crafted into — go figure — beer.
Dr. Raul Cano, a molecular biologist and retired Cal Poly San Luis Obispo professor, acquired the Eocene Epoch piece of amber in the early 1990s. He successfully extracted a yeast, and then managed to revive it from dormancy shortly thereafter. His achievement, however, was not met with universal applause. As supposedly the first person to pull off such a temporally irreverent feat, critics were naturally skeptical.
Another molecular biologist, Chip Lambert, was one such cynic. Hired by Ambergene, a company Cano helped found to pursue the study of such mycological discoveries, Lambert attempted to disprove these seemingly wild claims of reanimation. But things didn’t go exactly as Lambert anticipated; in following Cano’s method, he ended up corroborating Cano’s claims that an ancient yeast could indeed be revived.
In particular, one of Cano’s many discovered strains wound up being of the saccharomyces cerevisiae variety — or, as it’s more commonly known these days, brewer’s yeast.
“Once you’ve established that the yeast is saccharomyces cerevisiae, or a relative of it, you still don’t know if it’s a brewer’s yeast or baker’s yeast or what kind of yeast,” Cano says. “So then we actually tested them in the brewing process.”
The first batches brewed by the scientists’ newly founded company, Fossil Fuels Brewing Co., were rough. Cano and the independent brewers he brought aboard quickly discovered that such yeasts are difficult to use, unpredictable and, as brewer Ian Schuster put it, “high maintenance.”
“It needs to be roused,” Schuster says. “That’s the one reason why it’s been challenging and has different tastes at different temperatures. A lot of modern yeasts are like that, but this is much more.”
Schuster is the founder of Schubros Brewery, a 5-year-old microbrewery in San Ramon where he makes a variety of beers, from IPAs to imperial stouts.
1. Yeast Pulled From a Beard
 |
| Getty Images |
2. Vagina Beer Made From A Model’s Vaginal Yeast Set To Hit The Shelves
 |
| Getty Images |
The beer, Bottled Instinct, contains “femininity” and “women’s instincts” (whatever they are), and is brewed with yeast (or “Yoni”) from a specially selected woman.
The lucky lady giving up her, er, ingredient, for the beer is Czech model Alexandra Brendlova as she apparently has “all the desired instincts we wanted to frame” in our “ark of instincts” — that’s a bottle to you and me.
After a lengthy search, Alexandra was chosen as “the kind of female whose pheromones will stay with you for the following week”. Right.
Order of Yoni are currently raising money on IndieGoGo to start producing the sour-tasting beer and are offering generous donors the chance to have a beer specially made from their girlfriend’s vaginal swab. So romantic.
As for the technology, Order of Yoni vaguely claim to “isolate, examine and prepare lactic acid bacteria from [a] vagina”.
3. Bull Testicles
 |
| Getty Images |
This is another seminal moment in our 25 years of small-batch liquid art.
As you may recall, RMOS Stout made its debut during last year’s Great American Beer Festival. The draft-only beer earned press and consumer interest from around the world and led to long lines for the beer at our GABF table.
The new hand-canned version of Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is being sold in unique twopacks of labeled 12-ounce cans. It’ll be available at select retailers in our Denver distribution area.
For beer lovers outside of the Denver area, a limited amount of the beer will be available through the www.letspour.com web site starting March 11.
We’re certain that this is the ballsiest canned beer in the world. We believe it’s also the nation’s first twopack of cans.
The beer is made in tiny 8-barrel batches (instead of our usual, already small 20-barrel batch) and is the first in our new Even Smaller Batch Series of beers. (A barrel of beer equals 31 gallons and two standard 15.5 gallon kegs.)
Head brewer Andy Brown developed the beer’s recipe.
A meaty foreign-style stout, Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is made with Colorado base malts, roasted barley, seven specialty malts, Styrian Goldings hops, and 25 pounds of freshly sliced and roasted bull testicles.
Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is an assertive, viscous stout with a rich brown/black color, a luscious mouthfeel and deep flavors of chocolate, espresso and nuts. The beer sports a savory, umami-like note and a roasty dry finish.
Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is 7.5% ABV and 3 BPBs. (That’s balls per barrel.)
The beer came to life last fall after the enthusiastic response to our 2012 April Fools Day spoof video in which we claimed to have made the beer. I got the video joke idea and wrote up the script after sampling a traditional oyster stout (made with ocean-grown kind) by the fine folks at Odell Brewing.
Note the stellar performances by Andy, our former brewer Brad Landman (he’s now at Vine Street Pub) and the rest of our staff. Gabe Dohrn (a part-time Wynkoop staffer and founder of Avavision Media) was the video wizard behind the camera and did the exceptional edit job for the piece.
Folks who got the video joke thought it was a hilarious idea. Many of those who missed the joke were eager to try the beer. So we figured the only way we could top the humor of the video and make those stout drinkers happy was to actually create the beer.
We canned approximately 100 cases of the beer in this initial canning run of Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout. The beers are hand canned on a table-top canning machine from Cask Brewing Systems.
We’ve packaged RMOS in blank, unprinted aluminum cans that we label with a two-part label akin to those used on glass bottles. This method enables us to produce super-small batches of canned beer and avoid the 95,000 can minimum for painted cans from our can supplier.
Look for these nutty new twofers in our best Denver area stores. Have a ball!
4. On Iceland’s dung-smoked whale testicle beer
 |
| Getty Images |
(Teroes) How did you come to own a brewery on a farm in the Icelandic countryside?
(Arilíusson) We started in 2012 because we own this farm in Borgarfjörður [West Iceland] and we wanted to have a job near us at home. We were thinking outside the box. Beer is a passion, and German beer making inspires me, so we connected with a German brewer in Iceland because we were interested in the German purity laws.
What’s special about the beers you brew?
We have four kinds of beer—dark, lager, ale and strawberry fruit beer. We also have seasonal beers like our Christmas beer that uses raw licorice as an ingredient, our October beer that includes red barley and pumpkin seeds, and our Easter beer that is brewed with cocoa and Icelandic seaweed. The theme is always to include something Icelandic.
You also brew beer made from fin whale testicles…
We started last year with our first whale beer, Hvalur 1. The health department didn’t want us to produce it at first, but we were allowed to. The beer used whale meal as an ingredient, and it was something new for Iceland. It sold out almost immediately. This year, for Hvalur 2, we wanted to keep the concept, but use a different whale ingredient. We decided to use fin whale testicles.
How, exactly, do you brew with whale testicles?
We get the testicles frozen from the whaling company, and we have a licensed butcher chop it up for us to use. The testicles are cured according to an old Icelandic tradition. The testicles are salted, and then smoked with sheep dung. A whole testicle is used in every brewing cycle, and then the beer is filtered and pasteurized. We put a lot of effort into this, and it’s a long process.
What’s the beer’s connection to Iceland’s annual food festival, Thorrablot?
We wanted to create a true Thorrablot atmosphere that celebrates traditional Icelandic food. Every winter, Icelanders gather to eat traditional food that sustained our ancestors for generations. This is very popular here in the countryside, and we wanted the beer to be released at the same time of the festival. The dishes we eat include boiled sheep heads, liver sausage, ram testicles, fermented shark, wind-dried fish, smoked lamb meat, and blood pudding. We thought that Hvalur 2 would fit in well with Thorrablot by using an ingredient that is a little different.
Does the criticism from whale conservationists bother you?
It actually brings more attention to the beer, which is a positive thing. Most of the protests come from people outside of Iceland. People have to remember that the fin whale is not endangered in the North Atlantic, and Iceland is known for sustainable fishing and setting quotas for our whale hunt. There’s actually a lot of demand for our beer to be exported, but there are laws that limit which countries can import it because of anti-whaling laws. The beer will sell out in Iceland, and people from other countries want a taste.
Any new beers on deck?
We’re always thinking of how to use different Icelandic ingredients in our beer. It started with beers that use Icelandic seaweed and whale ingredients, and we’re thinking about other ideas like including Icelandic moss in a beer; we’re experimenting right now with an ale that has a lemon flavor.
5. Packaged in a Dead Squirrel
 |
| Getty Images |
The top ten devotees in the US who have invested more than $20,000 (£16,000) in the firm are set to receive a bespoke bottle of The End of History, a 55 per cent ABV blonde Belgian ale infused with Scottish nettles and juniper berries.
The super-strong beer was first created in 2010, when only 12 bottles were made. The money raised will go towards building a brewery in Columbus, Ohio, where a ban on brewing beer above 12 per cent has been lifted.
BrewDog invited fans to claim a share of the company in early 2016 when it launched Equity for Punks IV.
6. DOCK STREET WALKER: THE SMARTEST BEER YOU'LL EVER DRINK
 |
| Getty Images |
Walker, an American Pale Stout, was brewed with substantial amounts of malted wheat, oats and flaked barley for a smooth, creamy mouthfeel. Fuggle hops provide delicate, earthy notes while the cranberries create a sinister bloody hue, adding a slight tartness.
The pre-sparge-brain-addition (yes, you read that right) provides this beer with intriguing, subtle notes of smoke.
We fielded calls from Philadelphia to Asia requesting bottles of the bubbly brew, and were covered in Time Magazine, Uncrate, and Business Insider. Oh, and we also got a ring from Walking Dead producers, who were also keen for a bite, er, sip.
Watch former Head Brewer Justin Low and brewer Sasha Certo-Ware discuss the making of Walker with Pretentious Film Majors (their words, not ours!)
7. Danish Brewers Are Making Beer With Festival-goers' Urine
 |
| Getty Images |
The Danish Agriculture and Food Council dubbed the process "beercycling" and adopted it in an effort to be more eco-friendly.
“Just as we have seen shops sell goods that would otherwise have been thrown out, beercycling allows us to recycle a product that is normally flushed down the drain,” Karen Hækkerup, CEO of the council, told The Local.
Usually breweries use animal urine to fertilize barley fields, but this year the Nørrebro Bryghus brewery instead opted for human urine.
“When it comes to circular economy, Danish farmers are some of the best in the world. If you can brew a beer with urine as fertilizer, you can recycle almost anything,” Hækkerup said.
Denmark isn’t the only place to have experimented with urine as fertilizer. As beer is a diuretic, causing people to urinate frequently, researchers in California partnered with Sudwerk Brewery Co. to collect urine from patrons of the brewery in the summer of 2016.
UC Davis’ researchers hope to expand their project to include local farmers in a larger fertilizer recycling program.
Urine contains nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus — all necessary nutrients for plants — and unlike feces, urine carries no risk of passing on diseases such as salmonella, the Scientific American reported.
"Agricultural and health organizations should encourage people to use human urine as a fertilizer," wrote Håkan Jönsson, a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, who has studied urine recycling for 15 years.
While there is no actual urine in the beer, “golden pilsner” will likely never have the same connotation again.
8. Dogfish Head’s Celest-Jewel-Ale Is Made With Lunar Meteorites
 |
| Getty Images |
Here’s how it’s possible: The meteorites (procured from engineering firm ILC Dover, which makes spacesuits for NASA) are crushed into dust and steeped like tea in the brewery’s Oktoberfest lager.
9. Elephant dung beer sells out almost immediately
 |
| Getty Images |
Recently Japanese brewery Sankt Gallen introduced Un, Kono Kuro, a brew made from coffee beans that have passed through an elephant (there is no actual poop in the beer)--a technique that breaks down proteins in the coffee bean, giving the beer a smooth, earthy flavor.
According to RocketNews24, Sankt Gallen sold out of the brew on the first day of its sale, which was on April Fools' Day (no joke).
So how did it taste? Apparently, pretty good, according to RocketNews24.
"The combination of bitter and sweet stayed fresh and lingered in my head. It was a familiar aroma that accompanied me through the entire beer."
The pricey beans, called Black Ivory, comes from Thailand’s Golden Triangle Elephant Foundation, the same people that created the $50 cup of elephant dung coffee. Needless to say, you won't find Un, Kono Kuro in too many U.S. supermarkets.
10. The East Bay beer that’s 45 million years old
 |
| Getty Images |
Today, through the scientific maneuverings of two very dedicated molecular biologists and a rather adventurous East Bay brewer, microscopic cultures within the amber are being crafted into — go figure — beer.
Dr. Raul Cano, a molecular biologist and retired Cal Poly San Luis Obispo professor, acquired the Eocene Epoch piece of amber in the early 1990s. He successfully extracted a yeast, and then managed to revive it from dormancy shortly thereafter. His achievement, however, was not met with universal applause. As supposedly the first person to pull off such a temporally irreverent feat, critics were naturally skeptical.
Another molecular biologist, Chip Lambert, was one such cynic. Hired by Ambergene, a company Cano helped found to pursue the study of such mycological discoveries, Lambert attempted to disprove these seemingly wild claims of reanimation. But things didn’t go exactly as Lambert anticipated; in following Cano’s method, he ended up corroborating Cano’s claims that an ancient yeast could indeed be revived.
In particular, one of Cano’s many discovered strains wound up being of the saccharomyces cerevisiae variety — or, as it’s more commonly known these days, brewer’s yeast.
“Once you’ve established that the yeast is saccharomyces cerevisiae, or a relative of it, you still don’t know if it’s a brewer’s yeast or baker’s yeast or what kind of yeast,” Cano says. “So then we actually tested them in the brewing process.”
The first batches brewed by the scientists’ newly founded company, Fossil Fuels Brewing Co., were rough. Cano and the independent brewers he brought aboard quickly discovered that such yeasts are difficult to use, unpredictable and, as brewer Ian Schuster put it, “high maintenance.”
“It needs to be roused,” Schuster says. “That’s the one reason why it’s been challenging and has different tastes at different temperatures. A lot of modern yeasts are like that, but this is much more.”
Schuster is the founder of Schubros Brewery, a 5-year-old microbrewery in San Ramon where he makes a variety of beers, from IPAs to imperial stouts.
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