Two bottles of beer from an about 170 year old shipwreck near the Åland Islands in the Baltic Sea have been analyzed by a team of scientists from Finland and Germany led by Dr Brian Gibson of VTT Technical Research Centre.
Beer bottles from a 170-year-old shipwreck. Image credit: John Londesborough et al.
Some breweries have taken to resurrecting the flavors of ages past. Adventurous beer makers are extrapolating recipes from clues that scientists have uncovered from ancient brews found at archaeological sites.
Now European chemists have analyzed some of the oldest preserved beers from an 1840s’ shipwreck to try to provide insight into how they were made.
Dr Gibson and his colleagues explain that in 2010, underwater archaeologists discovered an old schooner south of the Åland Islands, Finland, at a depth of 50 m.
Archeological evidence suggests the shipwreck occurred during the 1840s, but the schooner’s name, its destination and its last port-of-call have not yet been identified.
The cargo consisted of luxury items, including more than 150 bottles of champagne.
Five bottles that look like typical early 19th century beer bottles were also brought to the surface.
One of these cracked in the divers’ boat. The liquid that foamed from the cracked bottle looked and, according to the divers, tasted like beer.
The beer was diluted with salt water, but it contained enough of the original ingredients for Dr Gibson’s team to analyze and get an idea of the initial recipe.
“Compared to modern beers, the shipwreck beers contained similar levels of potassium but 15- to 60-fold more sodium, presumably derived from sea water. This may have diluted the beers up to 30%,” the scientists wrote in the paper published in the Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry.
“Ethanol contents were low (2.8-3.2%) compared to typical modern lagers and ales. The mass ratios of glycerol and ethanol were 4.5% for both shipwreck beers, which is typical for a yeast fermentation product.”
Dr Gibson and his colleagues analyzed samples from two bottles recovered in the shipwreck.
They determined that the samples were different beers based on their hop content.
“Both beers were acidic, with pH about 1 unit below modern values,” the researchers wrote.
“The color strengths were in the range of modern ales and lagers, and much lower than porters or stouts.”
Bitterness was lower in the sample from the first bottle, corresponding to a modern light lager, and higher in the second bottle.
“Sulfur dioxide was not detected in beers: original sulfur dioxide would probably be oxidized over the 170 years underwater. Protein levels were very low in both beers.”
The overall shape and detailed features of both bottles indicate a high quality technology that was not yet used in Finland in 1840, but had been used to manufacture beer bottles for two or three decades in central and northern Europe.
“The presence of hop-derived bitter compounds confirms the use of hops for bittering the beers.”
“In summary, these two, about 170-year-old bottles contained two different beers, one more strongly hopped than the other with the low α-acid yielding hop varieties common in the 19th century.”
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John Londesborough et al. Analysis of beers from an 1840s’ shipwreck. J. Agric. Food Chem., published online February 9, 2015; doi: 10.1021/jf5052943
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