A centuries-old beer may be brewed again

In July and November last year, I reported that some very old champagne - the oldest ever recovered - had been found aboard a shipwreck deep beneath the Baltic Sea. Apparently it was still drinkable, and some bottles may be auctioned for as much as $135,000 apiece.

However, that wasn't the only alcoholic 'treasure' recovered from the wreck. The BBC reports:

The salvaging operation to bring up 145 champagne bottles - since determined to include vintages from Heidseck, Veuve Clicquot and Juglar - had one casualty: a bottle that burst open at the surface, revealing itself to be beer.

The brew has already been sampled by four professional beer tasters.

"They said that it did taste very old, which is no surprise, with some burnt notes. But it was quite acidic - which could mean there's been some fermenting going on in the bottle and with time it's become acid," said Annika Wilhelmson of the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT).

VTT has now been commissioned to get to the bottom of the sunken beer's recipe.

"We're going to try to see if we can find any living yeast or other microbial cells, because that would be very interesting with respect to reproducing the beer," Dr Wilhelmson explained.

. . .

Pinning down which hops have been used on the basis of further chemical analysis may be difficult, Dr Wilhelmson added, meaning that reviving the 200-year-old brew for modern drinkers may prove difficult.

"Whatever we analyse, we're going to have to do a lot of interpreting," she said. "We need to analyse what it is today and start thinking about what it was like when it was made - when it was fresh, because it clearly isn't fresh now."

There's more at the link. VTT have released this video clip of their researchers working on one of the bottles of beer.

I'd certainly be interested to sample a beer recipe that's more than two centuries old. One reads about how much stronger beer was then, and I'd like to find out for myself. (So, I'm sure, would the home-beer-brewing Atomic Nerds! We'll have to see if they can get the recipe in time to prepare a case or two for the next Blogorado . . . )



Peter