ESPOO, FINLAND—Bottles of beer recovered from a nineteenth-century shipwreck in the Baltic Sea have been sampled by researchers from the VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland and the University of Munich. “These bacteria were still alive,” said Brian Gibson of the VTT Technical Research Centre. “We have a reasonably good idea about what kind of hops were used, different ones than today. These hops would have been harsher, these days they are quite mild. The one surprising thing is the beers were quite mild. The original alcohol level was 4.5 percent, nothing extreme,” he told Discovery News. Seawater had seeped through the bottle’s cork, however, replacing about thirty percent of the bottle’s original contents. Chemical analysis suggests that the beer, which was brewed in the 1840s, was similar to a modern amber or lambic ale. “We looked at esters, which give beer a fruity or flowery taste. Most of the compounds that we would expect were there,” Gibson said. To read about vodka preserved in a bottle from another Baltic shipwreck, see “A 200-Year-Old Bottle’s Suprising Contents.”
Researchers Analyze Beer From 1840s
News March 6, 2015
Recommended Articles
Digs & Discoveries November/December 2024
Nineteenth-Century Booze Cruise
Digs & Discoveries September/October 2024
Shackleton’s Last Try
Digs & Discoveries September/October 2023
Sunken Cargo
Features July/August 2023
An Elegant Enigma
The luxurious possessions of a seventeenth-century woman continue to intrigue researchers a decade after they were retrieved from a shipwreck
-
Features January/February 2015
Shipwreck Alley
From wood to steel, from sail to steam, from early pioneers to established industry, the history of the Great Lakes can be found deep beneath Thunder Bay
(Courtesy Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary/NOAA) -
Letter From Cambodia January/February 2015
Storied Landscape
Through centuries—and perhaps even millennia—of cultural, political, and environmental change, Phnom Kulen has retained its central role in the spiritual life of a people
-
Artifacts January/February 2015
Bronze Age Dagger
(Courtesy Anders Rosendahl) -
Digs & Discoveries January/February 2015
The Price of Plunder