'Paleo Ale' made brewed with yeast on 35-million-year-old whale fossil

Bone Dusters Paleo Ale is made from yeast found on a 35 million-year-old whale fossil. (Bone Dusters)

A beer maker in Virginia has created a beer made from the yeast on a 35-million year old whale fossil.

The creation, called Bone Dusters Paleo Ale, is said to taste sweet and like Belgium beer and it has a 4-to-5-percent alcohol by volume (ABV) --slightly lower than regular beer.

Jason Osborne, co-founder of Paleo Quest, a non-profit dedicated to advancing paleontology and geology, teamed up with Jason Akerboom from the Lost Rhino Brewing Company to create this vintage brew.

The two headed down to the fossil archives of the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland to swab old bones for cells of a beer-making yeast.  Their hope was to find an untapped strain of yeast.  Yet after several attempts, they eventually found a variant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a yeast used by breweries everywhere. The new variant is called Saccharomyces cerevisiae var protocetus after the protocetid whale fossil from which they took the swabs.

So how does the Paleo Brew taste? “'The yeast seems quite wild and untamed, and the flavour is very Belgianesque,” Akerboom told the Daily Mail.

You can get a taste of the beer at Lost Rhino's tasting room and at local restaurants and bars in the Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia area.

Best of all the brewery will donate a portion of the proceeds to underprivileged schools’ science programs in partnership with Paleo Quest.