Hacker Cinema
Brew Masters
2010 · TV series · documentary · 60 min episodes · 1 season
Brew Masters is a television series that was run weekly on Discovery Channel starting on Sunday, November 21, 2010. The show focused on Sam Calagione, the founder and head of Dogfish Head Brewery, and his staff as they searched the world for new, ancient, and imaginative inspirations for beers.
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I don't know the actual answer to your question, but I do know that when you make beer from wild yeasts you get a really low alcohol content, like 1 or 2% ABV. There was an episode of Brew Masters^[1] that I remember watching where they collected wild yeast from a date tree in Egypt and used the yeast to make beer, and the ABV content was around 1% if I remember correctly. The brewer on that show was the head brewer at Dogfish Head, so if that's as good as he could get I doubt this company would be able to do much better. Modern alcohol is made using brewing yeast which has been selectively bred so that it has much higher alcohol tolerance, which is why we can make things like beer and wine with the alcohol percentages we're accustomed to today.
So this is pure speculation, but if I had to guess their 45M year old yeast can probably only be used to make a beer that's so watered down that it just isn't that appealing to a modern consumer.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1795111/
For anyone interested the Discovery Channel did a show with the guys from Dogfish Head [1]. Its pretty interesting to watch too bad they only made five episodes. They actually go to Egypt to find ancient forms of yeast to make beer with.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brew_Masters