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from the one-that-is-missing-from-FatPhil's-collection dept.
400-year-old Ecuadoran beer resurrected from yeast:
Inside an old oak barrel, Ecuadoran bioengineer Javier Carvajal found the fungus of fortune: a 400-year-old yeast specimen that he has since managed to resurrect and use to reproduce what is believed to be Latin America's oldest beer.
That single-cell microorganism, taken from just a splinter of wood, was the key to recovering the formula for an elixir first brewed in Quito in 1566 by friar Jodoco Ricke, a Franciscan of Flemish origin who historians believe introduced wheat and barley to what is now the Ecuadoran capital.
"Not only have we recovered a biological treasure but also the 400-year-old work of silent domestication of a yeast that probably came from a chicha and that had been collected from the local environment," Carvajal told AFP.
Chicha is a fermented corn drink brewed by the Indigenous people of the Americas before Spanish colonization.
Carvajal, who already had experience recovering other yeasts, found out about the ancient Franciscan brewery in Quito while reading specialist beer magazines.
It took him a year to do so, but he finally managed to find a barrel from the old brewery in 2008.
It was stored in Quito's San Francisco Convent, an imposing three-hectare complex built between 1537 and 1680, which is now a museum.
After extracting a splinter, Carvajal used a microscope to find a tiny yeast specimen, which after a long period of cultivation he was able to resurrect.
[...] For Carvajal, resurrecting the yeast and the age-old methods used to make the ancient recipe was simply a labor of love for "the value of the intangible."
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday August 07 2022, @09:16AM (3 children)
Last night, I had one which was flavoured with banana and chocolate, for example, and another that tasted of pissy nutsacks. But the latter was because they had a brett infection, not by design.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kazzie on Sunday August 07 2022, @07:06PM (2 children)
The same thing is common in UK (hard) ciders too. There seems to be three main classes of cider here:
1. The well-known, mass-produced ciders with lots of sugar and bubbles, but no taste* (Strongbow, Magners, etc)
2. Ciders made with other sundry fruits or other ingredients, so it tastes of something else instead (Rekordelig, Old Mout)
3. The smaller cider makers that know what they're doing, and make some proper stuff (Weston's, Thatchers, Rosie's)
I stick exclusively to the third category.
*There used to be a subset of this, which was cider fermented cheaply to higher strengths (White Lightning) but that's largely gone the way of the dodo., because cider was taxed less than beer
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday August 08 2022, @10:53AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday August 08 2022, @11:08AM
I don't know if you've seen Louis Theroux /Drinking to Oblivion/, it's as jolly as it sounds (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5561592/) The next time we went to the UK after seeing that, we made sure to hunt out Gaymer's K cider, which featured in the segment about an unfortunate French lass called Aurelie. It went down a treat at the Tallinn Crap Beer Festival - proper crap - but as we drank it my g/f & I dedicated the moment to Aurelie. https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/gaymers-k-cider-uk-version/107810/
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves