# 220 year old Shipwreck Yeast



## monkeymagik (3/9/20)

I've read a few articles about beer recovered from a 220 year old shipwreck and they were able to culture yeast from it. There's been a James Squire beer created from it and I think another craft brewery created a porter from it (name escapes me). Does anyone know if this yeast is available to buy for homebrew?


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## butisitart (3/9/20)

monkeymagik said:


> I've read a few articles about beer recovered from a 220 year old shipwreck and they were able to culture yeast from it. There's been a James Squire beer created from it and I think another craft brewery created a porter from it (name escapes me). Does anyone know if this yeast is available to buy for homebrew?


if memory serves me correct, the Launceston museum holds licence on the yeast. could be wrong here, but they might be the people to ask. as far as i'm aware, it hasn't been released for hb. i actually had the idea that the licence was held by a university, but can't find anything on that from the quick look i had.


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## Roosterboy (3/9/20)

I know it sounds old, the whole thing was a bit of marketing for James Squires, considering many breweries in Europe having been using the same yeasts for longer than 220 yrs .


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## monkeymagik (4/9/20)

Roosterboy said:


> I know it sounds old, the whole thing was a bit of marketing for James Squires, considering many breweries in Europe having been using the same yeasts for longer than 220 yrs .


Good point. The yeast in good old Coopers Sparkling Ale is pretty darn old


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## sp0rk (4/9/20)

monkeymagik said:


> Good point. The yeast in good old Coopers Sparkling Ale is pretty darn old


Sadly not as old as it was
It was a multistrain house yeast back in the day, now it's an isolated strain from that original mix afaik


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## butisitart (4/9/20)

remembering of course, none of those breweries have probably ever resurrected yeast that had been lying around in a storeroom for 220 years. or found a bottle up the back of the shelf cos nobody thought to do stock rotation for 14 generations.


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## hoppy2B (8/9/20)

I personally think the whole thing is BS TBH. It's more than likely just a wild yeast that was floating around the lab. I mean, did they even try to do a dna test on the dregs in the bottle to verify proof of concept?


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## kadmium (8/9/20)

hoppy2B said:


> I personally think the whole thing is BS TBH. It's more than likely just a wild yeast that was floating around the lab. I mean, did they even try to do a dna test on the dregs in the bottle to verify proof of concept?


I wonder if they asked for its ID.


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## butisitart (8/9/20)

kadmium said:


> I wonder if they asked for its ID.


you can't come into the club if you're under 220, and you need a parrot and a wooden leg


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## Roosterboy (8/9/20)

The thing that p.ssed me off was the campaign saying it's a 220 yr old beer, typical JS trying to manufacture their credibility. They always have some angle.


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## butisitart (9/9/20)

Roosterboy said:


> The thing that p.ssed me off was the campaign saying it's a 220 yr old beer, typical JS trying to manufacture their credibility. They always have some angle.


that's why we hombrew


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## Reg Holt (9/9/20)

butisitart said:


> you can't come into the club if you're under 220, and you need a parrot and a wooden leg


Can I join the club if I am known as "Jim Lad"


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## butisitart (9/9/20)

Reg Holt said:


> Can I join the club if I am known as "Jim Lad"


you get a life membership with a name like that LOL
had to refuse seaman staines and roger the cabin boy - pretty dodgy. and master bates


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## Blackman (10/9/20)

A mate of mine bought 2 of those JS bottles!.....
I wonder if there is yeast in them that could be harvested.


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## hoppy2B (10/9/20)

Blackman said:


> A mate of mine bought 2 of those JS bottles!.....
> I wonder if there is yeast in them that could be harvested.


I tried culturing wy1469 from a bottle that had been kept in a cellar for a couple of years and it didn't start up even after several months. I seriously doubt a yeast would come back to life after 220 years.
There are so many good yeasts out there to choose from, why bother farting around with something dubious when you can brew with stuff like wy1318 or the new Verdant dry yeast?


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## butisitart (10/9/20)

hoppy2B said:


> I tried culturing wy1469 from a bottle that had been kept in a cellar for a couple of years and it didn't start up even after several months. I seriously doubt a yeast would come back to life after 220 years.
> There are so many good yeasts out there to choose from, why bother farting around with something dubious when you can brew with stuff like wy1318 or the new Verdant dry yeast?


why bother going to antarctica if you can freeze to death in canberra?
cos it's there, i guess.
on the other hand, just reading through the article from Journal of Nautical Archaeology (2002) written by Michael Nash (copyright acknowledgement here) which says that analysis of at least one bottle suggested that it did contain beer or ale. so that predates the attempts on the yeast resurrection by 15 years. really interesting excavation read in its own right.
but i can't find anything on my uni library site about resurrecting the yeast though. i'd have thought there would be at least something from a chemistry/history/food tech journal, maybe i'm looking in the wrong places. report back if i find anything
all the recovered wine bottles showed at least some salt water contamination.
it doesn't actually say how many beer bottles were found, or give a report on what was inside them.

ps: yeah, so i can't find an academic article on the yeast resurrection, just news reports eg tv stations, news press. Normally these things would be verified by a different study or lab. not to say there isn't one, but i can't find one.
hope to stand corrected here 

there are articles on an 1840s wreck in the baltic sea with studies on the hops, phenomes, malts, but no mention of the yeasts, done by finnish university


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## butisitart (10/9/20)

ok, so another study on 3 bottles of different beers found in the back of a czech brewery in 2015, beers 100 years old.
they found the dna of yeast, but no viable yeast. (author copyright acknowledgement again - article by Jana Olšovská, and others, in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, apr 2017). they found dna for Bruxcellensis and Saccharomyces pastorianus. probably a good read for all you chemistry engineers.
can't draw conclusions here either, cos 1 lot was at the bottom of the ocean, the other was in the bottom of a cupboard.


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## butisitart (10/9/20)

found a letter from 1782 to a british mp by some guy who had a plan to make 'cheap and wholesome beer' to alleviate the suffering of the poor, but nothing about 220 year old yeast. not a whimper. searched under the ship (port jackson 1797 shipwreck - that's a nightmare in itself), wrecks, 220 years, yeast, beer, you name it. zip. nada. not a sausage.
cannot find one academic (science, food, chemistry) journal article on a huge university library database. not a sniff.
having said that, i can't even find an article with the australian institute of wine research or the guy in charge of yeast resurrection, (thurrowgood) linked to a journal on this subject. there's around 160 institute cross references on the database post 2015, and after getting bored on about page 30, didn't spot one on 220 year old yeast. plenty on wine and chemistry. maybe still looking in the wrong place.
again, hope to stand corrected, but i cannot locate one scientific peer reviewed article on this.


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## butisitart (10/9/20)

nada. an application for yeast patent in european patents office and a report from a tasmanian tourist mag. that's all the evidence i can find after turning the databases upside down.
not a sniff of another laboratory verifying the story. 
i give up.
somebody pls tell me i'm wrong LOL


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## hoppy2B (10/9/20)

butisitart said:


> nada. an application for yeast patent in european patents office and a report from a tasmanian tourist mag. that's all the evidence i can find after turning the databases upside down.
> not a sniff of another laboratory verifying the story.
> i give up.
> somebody pls tell me i'm wrong LOL


It's pretty doubtful that they succeeded in culturing a 220 year old yeast.


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## butisitart (10/9/20)

hoppy2B said:


> It's pretty doubtful that they succeeded in culturing a 220 year old yeast.


i'm being very legally mindful after my posts above, (i'm so happy i acknowledged the author copyrights) but i'm thinking april fool's joke, not because it's 220 yrs old - maybe conditions were perfect for it to curl up and sleep for that long, but, the original archaeological report mentions that all the wine bottles had salt water contamination in them (without specifically mentioning the beer bottles), but also, no peer reviewed research that i can find, that supports thurrowgood's claims.
myth busted, maybe?
would still love for somebody out there to show that it was a bone fide resurrection, but after trusting the 'science' for the past 3-4 years, i have to say that i've become rather cynical in the past 6 hours. it was very well presented ego massaging, from what i can find at the moment.
searches were all done on a major university's research sites, so a seriously good database to cough something up if it was there.


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## kadmium (10/9/20)

Considering fungal spores can last thousands of years, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. There are articles about 4,500 year old yeast harvested from terracotta pots and shown with genetic sequencing to be legit. They used it to make beer and bread. 

Considering yeast is a fungal spore, and haploids can last long times in dormancy I'm inclined to believe its possible. 

Also, why would they have published research articles? It's a collaboration between the museum and a brewery. Not saying it's 100% accurate, but saying that because you can't find articles published on your university Intranet means it's not true isn't accurate either.


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## butisitart (10/9/20)

kadmium said:


> Considering fungal spores can last thousands of years, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. There are articles about 4,500 year old yeast harvested from terracotta pots and shown with genetic sequencing to be legit. They used it to make beer and bread.
> 
> Considering yeast is a fungal spore, and haploids can last long times in dormancy I'm inclined to believe its possible.
> 
> Also, why would they have published research articles? It's a collaboration between the museum and a brewery. Not saying it's 100% accurate, but saying that because you can't find articles published on your university Intranet means it's not true isn't accurate either.


haven't entirely dismissed it, but i'm in the highly sceptical zone. so, a couple of points,
museum plus aus institute of wine research - on such an important, or even unique event, you'd think they'd push a bit harder for peer recognition. that's world serious kudos if valid. (taking the brewery out of the equation for a moment). and the aus institute of wine research - which is physically where the resurrection was supposed to have been done, has not published anything that supports it (as far as i can find). and i found a lot of their peer reviewed papers on the uni site. (which is not entirely an intranet, by the way. the library component also subscribes commercially).
but there is no peer review for this. so no chemist in germany or us or japan has been sent a report or a sample and said 'yep, judging by the dna, this looks genuine or even plausible.' it's not hard to do that. dna comparison gets done pretty routinely.
the only 'evidence' is a glossy statement from thurowgood, the chemist who claims to have retrieved the yeast.
the nearest similar situations are the 140 year baltic sea find, which didn't mention yeast, or the 100 year czech find which only found degraded yeast dna. but no functionable yeast.
then there's the curious point in the archaeological report that mentions that all the wine bottles were contaminated by salt water. both the wine and beer bottles had corks. there's no mention of salt water contamination either way with the beer bottles.
so, after assuming 12 hours ago that it must be true cos a guy in a lab coat said so, i've pretty much done a U-turn on the grounds of zero evidence, zero peer review. looking way more sham than glam,
but as above, it would be a much more pleasant story if somebody can present any evidence that this yeast was actually resurrected.


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## kadmium (11/9/20)

Yeah agree with your points. I was just saying I wouldn't rule it out entirely. Seems like you haven't so I think we're on the same page. 

It's possible it happened, but even the Egyptian yeast was from the pores inside dry pottery, a much better storage mechanism than salt water!


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## Andy Graham (11/9/20)

The story of the shipwreck yeast was covered by ABC show Catalyst a few years ago. If you can track it down, worth watching. Tassie museum sold all rights to the yeast to James Squire. Yeast no longer available to the brewing community. Locked away in JS vault. What a shame. A non filtered version of the shipwreck ale was on tap in a bar in Launceston. A few hombrewers have a culture I heard. Tried to get a sample from Tassie brew clubs but unsuccessful. Would have liked to give a trial. It could turn up one day. Hope so.


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## butisitart (11/9/20)

Andy Graham said:


> The story of the shipwreck yeast was covered by ABC show Catalyst a few years ago. If you can track it down, worth watching. Tassie museum sold all rights to the yeast to James Squire. Yeast no longer available to the brewing community. Locked away in JS vault. What a shame. A non filtered version of the shipwreck ale was on tap in a bar in Launceston. A few hombrewers have a culture I heard. Tried to get a sample from Tassie brew clubs but unsuccessful. Would have liked to give a trial. It could turn up one day. Hope so.


found it on youtube, but no time to watch this morning, gives me something to do while mulling over a quiet one tonight. cheers
(i''m on a mission LOL)


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## hoppy2B (13/9/20)

Interesting points made above about the feasibility of a 220 year old yeast, or perhaps more correctly, a yeast spore being resurrected. I still don't give a rats ass about the fact it might be 220 years old. I'd rather brew with a yeast that is likely to give me good results. If it turns out to be a good yeast and starts circulating among the community then sure I would consider using it, but even then it could have mutated by the time it got to me.


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## wide eyed and legless (14/9/20)

I doubt yeast could live without the means of reproducing. No doubt fungi is amazing but going dormant and lasting an age just doesn't seem credible.
It amazes me that something which doesn't seem to have much of a root structure can produce a toxin that kills adult humans. I can understand plants producing toxins to prevent being eaten, with a good root system but fungi stretches the imagination. 
I am impressed how this one behaves which feeds off insects.


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## sdillon (20/1/21)

Hi guys. Just came across at the end of last year and wanted to clear up a few things for everyone.

*Q*. Is it real ? *A*. yep, sure is. Did the isolation myself
*Q*. Can yeast last that long in bottle? *A*. So it seems. Another rescue was done by Carlsberg (Carlsberg 1883, was brewed with a yeast strain taken from a bottle of beer that was 134 years old). Low and constant temperatures, lack of movement and oxygen all contribute to its survival. A beer you left in the backshed for 2 years isnt anywhere near the same situation.
*Q*. How can the yeast survive when seawater ingress into the bottle would kill it? *A*. The beer bottle are different to the wine bottles that were analysed in the 90's and had a wax seal that covered the whole top and was still intact on many of the bottles
*Q*. Has this yeast been sequenced? *A*. Sure has, and its been revealed to be unique. There are actually 3 yeast species obtained from the Shipwreck (2 _Brettanomyces_ and one _Saccharomyces_ hybrid). 
*Q*. How do you know it just didn't escape from the lab? *A*. Maaaate! All are confirmed beer strains , so it didn't escape from the lab-its a bit insulting to suggest that actually, as lot of care was taken in isolating these yeasts.
*Q*. Why are there no scientific papers etc confirming this? *A*. A complicated question as the history of the strain makes a lot of the work hard to publish in a peer reviewed paper
*Q*. Can I buy / re-isolate this yeast? *A*. Nope 
*Q*. Can I find out more about this? *A*. Sure. Watch the Catalyst video from 2016 (Oldest Beer). It has a lot of the science used on there (albeit for a non-expert audience). BTW don't whinge that I used an extract beer in the "how to brew beer" section....its made for TV

Due to the commercial sensitive nature of this yeast that about all I can give you but I hope that helps!
Cheers


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## beergee (20/1/21)

sdillon said:


> Hi guys. Just came across at the end of last year and wanted to clear up a few things for everyone.
> 
> *Q*. Is it real ? *A*. yep, sure is. Did the isolation myself
> *Q*. Can yeast last that long in bottle? *A*. So it seems. Another rescue was done by Carlsberg (Carlsberg 1883, was brewed with a yeast strain taken from a bottle of beer that was 134 years old). Low and constant temperatures, lack of movement and oxygen all contribute to its survival. A beer you left in the backshed for 2 years isnt anywhere near the same situation.
> ...


Thanks mate, interesting!


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## kadmium (20/1/21)

sdillon said:


> Hi guys. Just came across at the end of last year and wanted to clear up a few things for everyone.
> 
> *Q*. Is it real ? *A*. yep, sure is. Did the isolation myself
> *Q*. Can yeast last that long in bottle? *A*. So it seems. Another rescue was done by Carlsberg (Carlsberg 1883, was brewed with a yeast strain taken from a bottle of beer that was 134 years old). Low and constant temperatures, lack of movement and oxygen all contribute to its survival. A beer you left in the backshed for 2 years isnt anywhere near the same situation.
> ...


Very interesting. Glad to know it (apparently) wasn't BS. Didn't seem impossible to me considering yeast was harvested from clay pots thousand plus years old.


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