Les presentamos Jurassic Saison: La cerveza que tardó 45 millones de años en elaborarse

Brewers are a special breed. They might best be described as part-mad scientists and part-avant-garde artists. Over the years, there have been some pretty wild beers dreamed up by breweries from around the world. For instance, in 2016, a U.K. brewer created a Polish Grätzer-style beer called Mr. Twit's Odious Ale using yeast found on the writing chair of Roald Dahl, author of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" among other works. Then there are the molecular biologists who developed Jurassic Saison, a beer made from 45 million-year-old yeast, under the name Fossil Fuels Brewing Company.

That's right, the yeast predates the (probably accidental) invention of beer sometime around 4000 B.C. by millions of years. Unfortunately, like the dinosaurs, Jurassic Saison is no longer in existence, or more accurately, no longer being brewed, but still available via online retailers. How Jurassic Saison came to exist is a pretty wild story. It started back in the 1990s when molecular biologist Raul Cano isolated DNA from an ancient weevil embedded in amber, a major scientific breakthrough. He later extracted an ancient yeast spore from amber mined in Burma (Myanmar) and was able to grow it and use it to make a wheat beer. If this sounds vaguely familiar, it's basically the plot of Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park," but with beer instead of marauding dinosaurs.

Beer... uh... finds a way

The process of extracting and growing the ancient yeast involved sterilizing and then freezing the amber in liquid nitrogen and then shattering it. The tiny fragments were then placed in microbiological growth media, like agar dishes. Raul Cano scored when one of the fragments containing the yeast spore began growing. Cano told the Washington Post in 2008, "It's just like the Rip Van Winkle effect. What they are doing, they are remaining dormant — the bacteria or the yeast and generally spores of some sort — and then when you take them out of the amber, they reawaken and continue to reproduce." He partnered with fellow molecular biologist Chip Lambert and tapped a home brewer to produce its first beers using the ancient yeast in 1997. In a full-circle moment, the beer was served at the cast party for "The Lost World," the sequel to "Jurassic Park."

By 2006, Fossil Fuels Brewing Company had its beer on tap at Stumptown in Guerneville, California. After fits and starts, the company scaled up with the help of Ian Schuster of Schubros Brewery and released its Jurassic Saison — a French-style farmhouse wheat ale — in December 2016. As is common with farmhouse ales, the beer has been described as earthy with strong lemon notes and a touch of pepperiness. "In this Saison, it has a really unique grapefruit taste and aroma," Schuster told Vice in 2016. Unfortunately, the beer is no longer being made and it appears the company has shut down (at least for now). But perhaps, like the ancient yeast Cano coaxed from its 45-million-year slumber, we'll again see a reborn Fossil Fuels Brewing Company and its Jurassic Saison.