
A beer brewed from a 200-year-old Tasmanian shipwreck - MiriamWeiner
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181206-a-beer-brewed-from-an-old-tasmanian-shipwreck
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gregdunn
I've read a dozen or so articles on this (It's been a somewhat popular
discussion on several homebrewing communities focused on using
interesting/rare/"alternative" yeasts), and the beer that's been brewed so far
has only used a subset of the yeast cultured from the bottles.

If they were trying to more faithfully reproduce the beer they found, they'd
need to use all of the yeast cultures they recovered. (They commercial beer
listed here was not actually attempting to reproduce the beer - just use the
yeast)

There's some debate as to whether or not the yeast they're using is a
contaminate, as well. Sacch strains do not seem to live long enough in
fermented beer to make it 200+ years (though there's evidence that Brett
strains will do just fine), and the samples were taken from bottles that had
been decanted 20 years prior. The characteristics reported of the yeast are
also similar to what many people find when using wild yeast. That might be due
to them being wild yeast contaminates, or due to the selective "breeding"
pressure of commercial yeasts having not yet eliminated these traits.

I wish they would sequence the yeast and release the results.

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logfromblammo
I'm forced to wonder whether the same strain of yeast also survived on the
surface near the original brewery location, and this revival is just a very
expensive equivalent of making San Francisco sourdough in a different locale,
from a starter culture packet received through the mail.

Except in this case, the starter is from a message in a bottle, lost at sea
for 200 years.

~~~
atomical
And also believing SF sourdough is actually a thing not born out of over
engineering and OCD? I think bread could become a bit like wine. People can't
actually taste the difference but enjoy being a bit snobby.

~~~
logfromblammo
Location matters to food and drink. You can taste the difference. You can even
taste the difference in ordinary tap water. I don't care all that much about
SF sourdough starter, specifically--it was the only one I ever noticed as
being sold commercially.

There is also a hobbyist network of people that trade their local sourdough
starter to people in distant lands, as dried-up blobs on index cards, through
the mail. People also trade kefir, kombucha, yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchee, and
vinegar starters. They wouldn't go to the trouble if it didn't make a
difference.

The local ambient microbiome certainly contributes to the texture and flavor
of fermented and aged foods, and it can be transplanted successfully for a few
months, but then the locals usually overwhelm the foreigners. When you find a
commercially significant one, you have to take great care to preserve it and
keep it pure.

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coldcode
I wish I could try some of the beer, but it seems only to exist down under.

~~~
boyter
As an Aussie I just tried looking for it and it seems difficult to find even
here. Might have to head to the brewery itself. The usual suspect of Dan
Murphys is out of stock
[https://www.danmurphys.com.au/product/DM_700183/james-
squire...](https://www.danmurphys.com.au/product/DM_700183/james-squire-the-
wreck-preservation-ale-750ml)

------
he0001
I had two things in my mind when I read this: where the hell can get my hands
on one and is it very smart to release a bacteria that obviously can survive
200 years in alcohol?

~~~
logfromblammo
Some microorganisms that produce a particular chemical as a metabolite are
more resistant to its toxicity. So they use that to competitive advantage.
It's the microbiological equivalent of pooping in the pool, so everyone else
gets out, and you can then swim in it by yourself.

Yeasts do this with alcohol. Acetobacters do it with acetic acid. Lactobacilli
with lactic acid. Other varieties exist, but their metabolites have less
culinary importance.

But they probably didn't "survive" 200 years. In order to last that long,
anything in the cold, dark, ethanol-contaminated bottles probably formed
spores, going into deep biological stasis to await more clement environmental
conditions. Not all microbes can do it, but the ones that can are considered
very hardy. Yeasts tend to switch from asexual reproduction to sexual
reproduction in nutrient-poor environments, and the resulting diploid cells
can sporify.

The question is analogous to questioning whether a human embryo that had been
frozen solid and stored in liquid nitrogen for 20 years is safe to thaw out
and implant in a live uterus. It's just not a big deal for us. Sporing up and
waiting a few centuries before thawing out the embryos is not a big deal for
yeast.

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rezmason
Talk about a ship in a bottle!

Now that the pun's out of the way, normal discourse can commence...

[edit] oh wait, all the comments are just other puns

