…well, actually, 45 million year old yeast.  Dr. Raul Cano, Director of the Environmental Biotechnology Institute at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo extracted the yeast from an unlucky weevil embedded in amber, reactivated it, and — budding zymurgist that he is — tried it out with a new brew.

The result?  Fossil Fuels Wheat Beer — a fine brew that is “smooth and spicy” (according to the Washington Post).

Okay, so it was Slashdotted earlier today… but we have to say, how very Long, and how totally Now.  Cheers!

By the way, this isn’t the only way beer functions as a long-term lens: “There is a perfectly respectable academic theory that civilization began with beer.”