Thursday, January 20, 2011

Awesome: Biology Professor Brews Beer with 45-Million-Year-Old Yeast

Via Tigerhawk comes a great story about California Polytechnic State University biology professor Raul Cano enjoying the fruits of his labor (I love the accompanying news photo!).  Here's a blurb about his delicious research:
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. 
Through brewing experiments with collaborators, Cano has been able to take strains of yeast from the ancient amber and grow them. And he was interested in finding out how it could be used in food or drinks. 
“Beer was the obvious product from an organism such as yeast,” Cano said. “It was either that or bread. But beer seemed more adventurous.” 
Fossil Fuels Brewing Co., the beer company that he’s formed with partners Chip Lambert, Joe Kelley and Scott Bonzell, now produces beer for sale primarily in Northern California bars and pubs.
Here's the link to Fossil Fuels Brewing Company!  I think we would all be justified in having a cold one, all in the name of academic research, of course!  Hmmmm, getting viable life out of amber ... Life imitates the movies once more, though I am sure beer is more delicious than velociraptors.  You know, all this talk about beer and biology inspires me to inflict the following on you ...





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