Worlds Oldest Drinkable Beer

Last November we posted about a plan by Finnish authorities to allow one or several modern breweries to replicate the recipe of beer found in a Baltic Sea shipwreck dated between 1800 to 1830.  In addition to cases of champagne, the wreck contained five bottles of the oldest drinkable beer ever discovered.   Now the local government of the Aland island chain, where the wreck was found, has commissioned a scientific study to attempt to determine the beer’s original recipe, as the first step toward brewing the ancient beer.

Shipwreck’s ‘oldest beer’ to be brewed again

Divers found the two-mast ship at a depth of about 50m in the Aland archipelago, which stretches between the coasts of Sweden and Finland in the Baltic Sea.

The ship was believed to be making a journey between Copenhagen in Denmark and St Petersburg, then the capital of Russia.

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.

Thanks to Dexter Donham for passing the article along