Like many potentially hare-brained projects, Dylan McDonnell’s idea to brew beer from yeast that’s nearly 3,000 years old started during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, McDonnell, an avid home-brewer in Millcreek, heard about someone who had baked a loaf of sourdough bread with a strain of yeast that’s a descendant of a 4,500-year-old Egyptian yeast.
McDonnell - who has never brewed professionally and started home-brewing using a kit from The Beer Nut - asked himself, “I wonder if I could do that for beer?”
McDonnell’s journey to connect with beer makers of the ancient world involved a German yeast company, ancient recipes on papyrus, and a search for rare ingredients from Egypt and Israel. It also required McDonnell to apply his home-brewing experience and his master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies to brew a beer with yeast descended from a strain of yeast from 850 B.C.E.
“It’s hard for me to convey to others how much this whole thing blew my mind,” McDonnell said. “Because it was just, like, cool thing after cool thing. And it connects you to the past, right? Like, while doing this, I remember brewing and just looking up at the sun and being like, ‘Somebody else was literally doing this 3,000 years ago, with this exact same recipe.’”
Read more at sltrib.com.
Reporting and writing by Kolbie Peterson
Video by Trevor Christensen
The Salt Lake Tribune