Best Yeast for Ancient Beer

I have no personal ideas here other than perhaps shoot an e-mail either to Sam Calagione (Dogfish Head) and/or Dr. Patrick McGovern (University of Pennsylvania).

Best of luck here.

Cheers!

 

Are you indifferent about using the best choice of a contemporary cultured yeast that will work with your ingredients vs. something that has roots from 5,000 years ago? When I see articles like this https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/science/egyptian-yeast-bread.html it tells me that ancient yeast is around somewhere, but it's a question of who has it and can you get some. The article has names that you might contact in addition to the two that Jack gave you in the post above.

I wonder if it's possible to culture some yeast from one of the Dogfish Head beers?

P.S. Welcome to the BA site, midastouch, and to the Homebrewing forum. Hang around as much as you'd like.

 

With so much complexity from ingredients, ingredients that most of us have never tasted together, why bother trying to layer in some additional interesting yeast flavor? Use a neutral yeast like US-05.

I think your conclusion at the outcome is more likely lean towards "now I see why beer evolved to be mostly malt, hops, yeast, and water" as opposed to "this melange would be perfect if it had a more phenolic yeast strain."

 

I agree with @pweis909, that you have selected an awful lot of ingredients. You might want to simplify and perhaps do multiple different recipes with different combinations of a few of these ingredients, so that you'll better understand what you are actually tasting at the end of each.

Once upon a time, beer yeast and bread yeast were identical. Beer was brewed using bread yeast, so it tasted even more like liquid bread than it does today, and bread tasted like... bread. The breadiest beer yeasts today that I know of include Wyeast 1007, Lallemand K-97, and Lallemand BRY-97.

If you want to try something similar but a little more phenolic and interesting, you could try BRY-97's cousin, T-58, or a Belgian yeast like WLP530, WLP570, Wyeast 3787 or 1388, or WB-06 would all do very nicely with a bit more wildish character.

Welcome to the forum. Cheers, and I wish you all the best in your experiments.

 

I think 75 Minute IPA might be their only bottle conditioned beer.

I can also add that Midas Touch does not use a belgian strain. You'll see that in some of the clone recipes, but when Midas Touch first came out, I asked, and the answer was no.

 

I'll throw in for US-05 as well. If it turns out well, maybe experiment with a yeast that has a bit more character.

I'd imagine that most beers back then probably also had some sort of mixed fermentation, but to my understanding most beer was drank fresh, so impact of Brett and bacteria would probably be slight to none. Some lactic character might be a good thing, though, since there really isn't much to add a counterpoint to the sweetness of the malt.

 

Yes, the beers of ancient Egypt, Sumeria, etc. would not have been fermented with a single microorganism (e.g., single strain of yeast) but you are correct that they would have been consumed fresh, sometimes with long straws:

 

@midastouch you might enjoy reading this article on the AHA website entitled “Pharaoh Ale: Brewing a Replica of an Ancient Egyptian Beer:.

https://www.homebrewersassociation....rewing-a-replica-of-an-ancient-egyptian-beer/

You will read that a decision was made to “pitch it with freshly drawn “Chico”-type ale yeast.”. So, US-05 would be a good choice here.

Cheers!

 

Let us know how all of your efforts turn out.

 

Long straw was necessary to not drink all the particles left in due to filtering not being as thorough as we are used to.

 

I wonder how often the straw got clogged. Maybe part of the entertainment of drinking beer was shooting out stuff periodically - the first spit balls?

Cheers!

 

Choking on a grain husk- the first party foul!

 

Whoa!

You seem to be taking this seriously. Did you get yourself some ancient garb to wear while drinking this beer!?!

Cheers!

 

I would have thought the straw's purpose was to distance oneself from the beer if it had a vile odor.

 

Maybe some Kahmunrah action?