Aging Like a Fine Wine: Divers Prepare To Recreate 162-Year-Old Guinness Beer Found in Shipwreck Off English Coast

The smooth, chocolatey flavor of an early-version Guinness stout is coming back from the dead, literally, with the help of brewmasters, a DNA lab at Brussels, and divers who located a 162-year-old version of the beer in a shipwreck off Dover, England.A box of 18-20 perfectly preserved bottles of the brew were found by diver Stefan Panis last year aboard the ship Mindora, which sank following a collision with another vessel on November 27, 1864, while on its way to Vancouver from London. The cargo of the sunken vessel, first discovered a decade ago by Polish diver Pawel Truszynski, was being documented when Mr. Panis found the box resting upside down and pressurized in the murky four-degree water 30 meters below the surface. The conditions were perfect for preserving the beer, which according to historical records of brewmaking at the time, had been transferred to London from Dublin in barrels before being bottled. Only recently did the divers match the manifest to records from the era kept by an offshoot of the shipping insurer, Lloyds Register of Ships held by the High Court of Admiralty in the United Kingdom’s National Archives. The ship was recorded as the “Mindoro,” a slight variation in spelling that reportedly was common among recordskeepers of the time, according to the Irish Times. The divers then enlisted the help of a microbiologist and geneticist, Kevin Verstrepen, a professor at Leuven University in Brussels, who is looking to capture the DNA of the yeast in the bottles to create a Frankenstein-like copy of the beer or pair it to a modern-day equivalent to mimic the original recipe. The group is calling the endeavor “Project Jurassic Beer.” “The absolute highlight of this entire project is the attempt to isolate and revive the original 19th-century yeast,” Mr. Truszynski said on his Facebook page. “Scientists will undertake this extraordinary task—and if everything goes as planned, this yeast will officially be placed on the historical family tree of Guinness yeast!”Guinness Beer, founded by philanthropist Arthur Guinness on December 31, 1759, at the St. James’s Gate Brewery at Dublin, was already a worldwide commodity at the time of the shipwreck, having sold 350,000 barrels a year by 1868. Guinness produces about 50 million barrels per year these days and its recipe varies according to local tastes in the 49 countries where it is brewed. The company’s current leadership is working in conjunction with the diving team to “evaluate the find.” “Discoveries like this provide a fascinating window into our past and help build a deeper understanding of our heritage,” a spokesman for Guinness’s parent company, Diageo Ireland, told the Irish Times.

Aging Like a Fine Wine: Divers Prepare To Recreate 162-Year-Old Guinness Beer Found in Shipwreck Off English Coast

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