10,000 yr old glacier ice for my water source in the next batch.....

Ahoy hoy,
Well my mother is up from the states visiting, so I broke down and took her and the family down to Valdez, Alaska for a night. While I was down there, we stopped at the Worthington Glacier north of the pass, and, with pick axe in one hand, and a coleman extreme in the other, I hiked about a mile and a half to the base, and a quarter mile upside the mtn, to reach the glacial ice. I took my wife out as well. We picked enough to pack the cooler full, and then about killed ourselves hauling this cooler down the mtn. As a 49 year old tub, it was my ex military training as a grunt that still had me imagine I could do such silly stunts at my age. But, the wife and I persevered, and we made it back to the truck with load intact. The ice I have has been frozen in this glacier since before Christ, the pyramids, Rome, to name a few. Everyone who asked me what could possibly cause me to drag that cooler in and out ( as they were using the spotting scope to see just how far we went to get this ) were more then satisfied with my answer " Im going to brew a glacial ale".
Until I melt it down and see just what I have and how smal the batch will be, I will not choose the recipe yet.
Anyway, I wanted to share with those who might care. Ill let everyone know how this one goes.....
I bid you a great day......

That's awesome. Good luck.

wow this is sweet... you know about how many pounds of ice you collected?

Glacial Ale huh? That is pretty wild. Definitely interested in how it turns out.

Hopefully you don't start growing some embryo from a pre-historic monster in there or something.

very admirable sir...really, its incredible. 10,000 years. i would like to try some of that

I was in Argentina, and visited one of the worlds biggest glaciers and the only one still growing. I went hiking on it and i had the exact idea. However it was to remote and I had to hiked a lot and went on a boat to just get to it. I then found it impossible to take water all the way back to the states. Non the less the water tasted amazing. We took a bottle of johnny walker and drake a cup on the rocks using the glacier ice. AMAZING!! i cant wait to see how it turns out! The envy eats me...

here's a pic of the glacier i visited.
http://www.eviajado.com/files/media/el-calafate-1.jpg

Sweet! I wanted to do the same with the water we were drinking while sheep hunting in the Talkeetna Mountains. Tastiest water ever and full of minerals. Glad to see someone had big enough kahunas to follow through. Let us know how she turns out!

You'll need help next time. Call me. I've always wanted to visit Alaska anyway. :rockin:

I would use glacier hops in that beer!

Let's see Budweiser pull off a stunt like that on a commercial scale!

Great stuff!

Unless you were to core drill to get to the older ice, your collection consists of younger, much more recent ice.

Why would that be? I figure if you are chopping off the face of the glacier then it will be the ice that has worked it's way south slowly. If you were hacking off the top then I would agree...

*I really don't know a whole heck of a lot about glaciers.

conpewter said:

Why would that be? I figure if you are chopping off the face of the glacier then it will be the ice that has worked it's way south slowly. If you were hacking off the top then I would agree...

*I really don't know a whole heck of a lot about glaciers.

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Me either! I agree with your theory though. That's how I understood it.

Actually, that water is over 4 billion years old, like all the water on earth.

Remember, that water you are brewing with has in all likelihood passed through many bladders over the eons.

Cpt_Kirks said:

Actually, that water is over 4 billion years old, like all the water on earth.

Remember, that water you are brewing with has in all likelihood passed through many bladders over the eons.

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Yeah, but the fascination is that this water has been "resting" for 10,000 years. Therefore it has never been through Napoleon's bladder.

Oh yeah, to the OP. You might need to buy a mammoth poop filter for that water.

According to AL Gore ( It's a good thing that you got some) it will be melted by next week

I get what you are saying, but not all water is 4 billion years old. I know when you burn hydrogen one of the byproducts is water. There are tons of other reactions that will create water as well.

Cpt_Kirks said:

Actually, that water is over 4 billion years old, like all the water on earth.

Remember, that water you are brewing with has in all likelihood passed through many bladders over the eons.

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Damn, you beat me to it! I brew with glacier water every time I brew. It's just been melted for a reeaaally long time.

That is truly amazing!!! :rockin: Glacier hops, as mentioned, would be a great addition! I think they are like Willamette?? Patiently awaiting the results...

Henry Hill said:

Unless you were to core drill to get to the older ice, your collection consists of younger, much more recent ice.

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I think you might be right on this....ice that is on the surface of glaciers melts/ refreezes with the changes in the season and therefore it was likely ice that was fairly new.

Way to harsh his buzz you guys! I think this is a neat idea. Let's see Coors brew their banquet beer like this!! +1 to using Glacier hops!

Well congratulations on getting all scientific and ruining a guys moment! Here's a cookie for knowing about glaciers

Still a very cool brew to the OP

*Edit* Darn you Evil

OK, you shamed me into it

Buzzkill deleted. Carry on!

conpewter said:

I get what you are saying, but not all water is 4 billion years old. I know when you burn hydrogen one of the byproducts is water. There are tons of other reactions that will create water as well.

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The amount of water created by man is so small a percentage of the total water present on the planet that I would get tired typing the zeros to show the number.

My guess is the part that he got was old ice as the glacial ice itself melted most of any acumulated recent ice. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Last year I got pieces of iceberg ice and made a complete AG brew out of it including the starter. The time that ice spent getting here melting all the way down, I think, melted all the recent ice of the berg and all I got was old ice. You can tell how compact the ice was and how difficult it was to melt, that I got good ice.
BTW it made awesome beer, and the bragging rights were cool also.


To the op, Congrats, you'll make great beer with ice free of a lot of what goes into the water these days.

Screw the pedantic m-f'ers, I still think it's frickin' cool.

Dogfish head did a brew like that, Pangea. They took an ingredient from every continent.

Jeez, now people are going to start complaining that homebrewers are adding to global warming and glacier depletion. Thanks for ruining it for rest of us...

Myself, I'm on the scientific side and tend to agree that water is water, and it always has been. The difference is the dissolved gas and mineral content, and that can happen to the same extent naturally in a matter of days, months, years, epochs, etc...

I have never been much on bragging rights, and this stunt seems to me to be very similar to things like sending people to the moon, building a better H bomb, rock crawler jeeps, etc. Things that either can be accomplished in simpler ways or serve little purpose in the first place. Just a way for humans to feel superior to nature.

I'm mostly joking about glacier depletion, but ice is a mineral, and a glacier is considered a sediment of sorts. State parks vary, but removal of material from federal lands is a felony. The reason for such a law is not to "buzzkill" but if everyone came and took a piece there would be nothing left.

Just hoping to provide perspective, not cause an argument. But to be honest when I read the OP I was more annoyed than impressed.

Don't waste it though, hope the beer turns out fantastic.

Glacial Ice in a Bottle!!!! Brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!!

Saccharomyces said:

Screw the pedantic m-f'ers, I still think it's frickin' cool.

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I was going to say something about the poetry of passing of millennia captured in the feminine form of a bottle.......But yeah, you got it right. Screw the pedantic m-f'ers, I still think it's frickin' cool.

Laughing_Gnome_Invisible said:

Let's see Budweiser pull off a stunt like that on a commercial scale!

Great stuff!

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true to recipe, they'd fly a plane with a bag of hops in it over the glacier before melting it.

Medo said:

Well my mother is up from the states visiting...

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Just one more thing to complain about...

I thought Alaska was the 49th state.

Despite all the buzz killers (who are really prolly just jealous mofos and wish they had access to it, or even thought of it to begin with) I think this is awesome as all get out!!!

And I look forward to your results!

Revvy said:

Despite all the buzz killers (who are really prolly just jealous mofos and wish they had access to it, or even thought of it to begin with) I think this is awesome as all get out!!!

And I look forward to your results!

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I'm still a bit worried about mammoth poop though.

... and I just want to make sure I don't need my passport if I visit him to try this awesome idea.

thataintchicken said:

true to recipe, they'd fly a plane with a bag of hops in it over the glacier before melting it.

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If it were Miller they'd have to fly the plane over the top of the glacier 3 times.

I'm not pedantic. I'm just a smart-ass. Always have been always will be. I'm the type of guy who, when asked "Hey-what does that sign say?", will invariably answer "It doesn't say anything, you have to read it." I don't mean anything by it, except to be a smart-ass. I could give two sh!ts whether he made glacier beer or stole ten gallons of Holy Water from the Vatican that was personally blessed by the Pope and brewed with that.


Hmmm........Idea. Papal Porter?

Laughing_Gnome_Invisible said:

Screw the pedantic m-f'ers, I still think it's frickin' cool.

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Yeah. Exactly. Screw 'em. Let them...um...pedant somewhere else. :rockin:

Completely awesome!!

I used to give blood several times a year for years.

About 15 years ago I went hiking up to a glacier in Britsh Columbia. I drank the water flowing off the glacier. Three weeks later I gave blood again. Two days latert I received a notice from Red Cross that I had contracted hepatitis and could no longer donate blood.

Now I joke about getting contaminated by pteryldactyl piss...

Word of warning: You might want to get the water analyzed first.