Modern microbrews are all the rage right now, but that didn't stop researchers from bringing back a beer recipe from the distant past.
Scientists have analyzed some of the oldest preserved beer samples from an 1840s' shipwreck in hopes of gaining insight into how it was made, the American Chemical Society reported.
The brew recipe was discovered in 2010 during the excavation of a schooner at the bottom of the Baltic Sea near Finland. The ship, that is believed to have gone down about 170 years ago, was found to be brimming with booze. The beer was heavily diluted with salt water after spending centuries under the sea, but there was still enough of the original liquid there for researchers at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. and the Technical University of Munich to analyze and get a good idea of the recipe.
The scientists braved taking a sip of the super-old liquid, but "weren't able to discern the beers' intended flavors." This is most likely because bacteria growing in the bottle produced organic acids that "gave the samples vinegary, "goaty" and soured milk flavors that overpowered the original fruity, malt or hop profiles," the researchers reported.
Despite this significant roadblock in the path to finding the beer's original recipe, the researchers performed analytical testing to determine the brew's rough composition. Samples from two separate bottles appeared to be completely different beers based on their hop contents. They found the yeast-derived flavor compounds were not far off from what is tasted in today's beers, but the samples contained higher levels of rose-like phenylethanol than modern drinks.
Inspired by the researchers' analysis, Stallhagen Brewery created a replica of the 1800s recipe. The findings were published in a recent edition of the Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry.
