Overflowing glass of beer. Photo: Image Source (Getty)
Usually having a sip of something that was around when Thomas Jefferson still had a pulse would give me the heebie-jeebies. Then again, the crew at Australia’s oldest brewery has brought a beer back from the dead that has us rather thirsty.
According to the World News Network, James Squire teamed up with Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery and the Australian Wine Research Institute to retrieve and isolate the yeast from bottles of beer that were found in a shipwreck 20 years ago.
Making its way to Sydney, Australia in 1796, the Sydney Cove left Calcutta, India but never reached its final destination. Instead, it sunk to the bottom of the ocean. It wasn’t seen again until a team of divers found it more than 200 years later and surfaced items such as shoes, anchors and of course, 8,321 gallons of the world’s oldest surviving bottled alcohol.
Scientists carefully isolated and removed the “historic yeast,” but they only “tamed” it after quite a few rounds of trial and error. The yeast then made its way to a laboratory, where it was put to work in hopes of coming up with a beer that was “commercially viable.”
It’s unknown whether the age of the beer would play a factor here: Want To Live Longer? Drink Beer
Well, they finally did it. The result is a “dark, malty, spicy and stormy” brew. Dubbed “The Wreck-Preservation Ale,” the porter-style beer was “inspired by the porters, small ales and IPAs found on the ship.”
“The Wreck” is available now in a limited release, but you’ll have to get your ass down to Australia to get your hands on it. Cheers!
