Secure Early-VIP Access & Help bring the world's oldest beer to market!

Have your reached this page after the campaign has ended and is closed for new orders?  If so, fret not.  You can jump over to our brewery page here for the rest of September and score the same great stuff -- although not with these Indiegogo discounts.  If you're still in time, and this campaign's still running, please read on!

Fossil Fuels Saison ale is brewed with 45-million-year-old yeast, extracted from Burmese Amber in 1992 by renowned microbiologist Raul Cano - the man the hailed by the Washington Post as the "Real Life Jurassic Park Scientist".  Fossil Fuels is hands down the World's most ancient beer.  Quite possibly, it's also its best, and tastes unlike anything else you'll ever have -- please see the tasting notes below.

The Story (short version) & The Campaign: After 24 years of harvesting and husbanding yeast, and countless test batches, we're finally on the home-stretch of bringing this amazing beer to market!  As such, we are offering early access to 1st Edition batches (replete with founders' autographs and authentic amber stones), Gala Invites, beer soap, t-shirts, taphandles, secret newsletter and stickers to those who pledge. 

We are running this campaign, and extending this offer because we are a small company, and need help to get over the final Research and Development cost-hurdles.  We are looking to raise at least $40k in funding to bring history back to life.  Funds raised will help us build the right laboratory and infrastructure to better protect and nourish the yeast, to enhance capacity, and to bring more beer of more styles to the market faster.  Fact is, with a yeast this rare and unusual, The World may never get a second chance.  We need to get this right the first time!

Curious about our journey? Please check out our embedded short video about the beer, how it all got started, the perks we're offering, and what we look to achieve. The picture gallery also includes pictures from our product development efforts.

Curious about the alchemy of beer and the remarkable role yeast play?  

• Check out NK Motion's great 2 minute animation about how to make beer. 
• For that perfect level of detail if your looking to learn about how to make beer in about 5 minutes of downtime, turn here to How Stuff Works.   
  
• For a quick video on the magic of yeast and fermentation, check this out, again on How Stuff Works
• But if you want to know how different yeast affects beer flavor, I hope you have a free week or two.  The effect is massive and virtually beyond description. Best to listen to your own tongue. And the rare opera our Fossil Fuels yeast will serenade you with, is like nothing any internet or pen-yielding guru shall have enjoyed before.

Tasting Notes & Beer Statistics:

Saison's are a spectacular style of beer that date back hundreds of years -- beers built by the farmers along the French-Belgian border.  Crisp and refreshing enough to quench thirst in the hottest of heat, yet bodied and rugged enough to survive months of temperature-hostile summertime storage, Saison's are a beer-paradox. 

K. Florian Kemp in All About Beer Magazine sums up the Saison style's appearance, flavour and finishing experience beautifully as: "Burnished gold and lightly hazy with an impossibly dense and billowing rocky white head. The nose presents the unmistakable damp forest and leaf aroma of Goldings hops and yeast blend, with clove and tangerine. The mouthfeel is light and the flavor is hoppy, pleasantly organic and coarse."  

Our ancient yeast takes this experience to another level - adding remarkable grapefruit, and at times almost light-papaya notes.  It adds a level of very light sweetness midway through the tasting sensation, but then allows that to fade away to provide a remarkably clean finish.  So the next taste enables you to relive the same pleasurable sensation.

It's remarkable.

The stats below will not reflect the final product, but will describe our most recent test batch of the Saison. 

- ABV (alcohol by volume): 5.9% 

- SRM (Standard Reference Model - read color) : 3.2 [a light golden]

- IBU (International Bittering Units):  31 [twice that of an English brown; half to a third that of a modern California IPA]

The Team:

 - Dr. Raul Cano is a Professor Emeritus at the California Polytechnic State University, and is the first scientist ever to isolate viable DNA from an amber crystal.  Having successfully harvested live cells from an ancient bee, he's the very embodiment of the science behind Jurassic Park.  Fortunately, he chose to bring ale-yeast back.  Not dinosaurs.  Check out a younger Raul in action on Discovery Channel here (from about 1:50 into the video).

- Chip Lambert is another microbiologist, who ironically was hired to debunk Raul's findings back in 1993.    The science world was highly skeptical of what Raul pulled off, but instead of disproving it, Chip was shocked to find out Raul was right.  They quickly bonded and partnered to found Fossil Fuels.

- Ian Schuster is the CEO and Founder of Schubros Brewery in San Ramon, California.  He's partnering with Raul and Chip to bring this completely unprecedented product to market. 

The future:

This is just the beginning. If When we are successful, additional funds will go towards setting up a dedicated facility that will create more amazing beers using not only this 45-million- year-old yeast cultures, but also another 25-million-year-old culture (mere youngsters!) Raul has also managed to resurrect. 

So to celebrate and say thank you, in addition to the normal perks we're also setting some Extra-Thank-You thresholds:

• If we break $250,000 we'll give commemorative campaign t-shirts to everyone who pledges at voucher level or higher.
• If we hit $500,000 in this campaign, all supporters at the voucher level or higher will also get VIP early rights to our next 45-million- year-old- yeast brew, Fossil Fuels Wheat.  
• If we hit $750,000 or above, "Voucher level" and above pledgers will get Fossil Fuels Amber VIP early rights as well.

Finally, if you can help us spread the word and are of age, we'll route you a voucher as thanks. Just contribute at any level, send an email to marketing@schubrosbrewery.com with the names and contact info of 5 other persons you talked to, who also contributed at any level, and after verifying you're their inspiration, we'll get you that voucher for another piece of history!

So please help out if you can, and please share this campaign with friends on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  Plus, check out our Rafflecopter sweepstakes campaign on Facebook for a chance to win some swag and maybe even another voucher.

WARNING:  The rest of this write-up is all covered in the video; no burning need to read any further.  But just in case you're a 'reader' rather than a 'watcher', we'll droll on some more below. 

First, the story behind the beer:

45 million years was quite a while ago.  Post-dinosaurs yes, but well before man, well before our primate ancestors, well even before Australia separated from Antarctica.  Birds were learning to fly, mini-pig-dog-horse things were evolving into bigger-pig-dog-horse things, and the Eocene Epoch was rapidly working on crafting its greatest creation -- Brewing yeast.

Now fast forward to the late twentieth century, and microbiologist Dr. Raul Cano's chance discovery of a beautiful amber stone, replete with a 45 million year old leaf, and a single yeast spore -- still alive and itching to make beer.  

What We Need & What You Get

We need your help to carry this through, and finish what is 45 million years in the brewing.  New Product Development is exceptionally expensive -- especially here, with an exceptionally rare and special yeast.  We need to do this right the first time, and there's not much room for error!  But we need some help to raise the cash to build up the proper infrastructure.  It's a once in a lifetime opportunity for all of us.

In return we've put together a collection of awesome gifts for your support, including:

• Our secret newsletter
• Stickers
• Beer-soap
• Vouchers to receive a First Edition batch (signed, and delivered to you anywhere in CA with a genuine amber stone by our exclusive-beer-delivery-partners AluluClub), 
• Invites to the launch Gala in San Francisco, 
• Schubros Taproom-plaque immortalization, and even
• Your own private labeled batches.  
  

Risks & Challenges

The main risk to this project is funding -- funding for scientific equipment, and making sure we can keep this yeast isolated throughout the brewing and yeast-propagating and harvesting process.  If we have to bootstrap this, and can't get access to the right laboratory materials we could potentially lose this yeast, and it's not easy for Raul to get back to Myanmar to grab any more amber.  This really is an once-in-a-lifetime shot to pull off something amazing.

Other Ways You Can Help

We understand if you can't contribute, or want to do even more to help -- in fact we've added in those fund-raising "Thank You" thresholds specifically to help us pay you back this favor.  We can certainly use as much help as you can give! So if you would, could you please:

• Tell everyone who doesn't run away from you about this campaign?
• Check out our Rafflecopter giveaway on our Facebook page under the giveaway tab for another chance to secure a bottle or some SWAG
• Share this campaign opportunity on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and every other social median you have your disposal. Indiegogo has all the sharing tools one could dream of to make this easy
• Check out our Rafflecopter sweepstakes campaign on Facebook for a chance to win
• If you have any blogging friends, or know any journalists or news personalities, please let them know about this, and ask them to reach out to marketing@schubrosbrewery.com for any more info or if they'd like to talk to one of us.  We're all complete hams, so happy to talk! 

Thank you!

-Raul, Chip, and Ian