Popping the Cork on 170-year-old Beer Thanks to Chromatography

The term “chromatography” might not inspire excitement in those who don’t work in the field of laboratory sciences, but you might be more intrigued by the process than you think. Indeed, chromatography has been instrumental in helping us understand more about our past – and how we lived (and became intoxicated) hundreds of years ago.

Last year we brought you the news of a 150-year-old perfume that had been successfully recreated by analysing contents of a sealed bottle found aboard a sunken ship in 2011. Examination of the bottle using chromatography unearthed information about the ingredients that went into the fragrance and then scientists in a lab were able to artificially recreate it. Now, a similar incident has occurred – but this time, with beer.

Flotsam, Jetsam and Ale

In 2010, a schooner was discovered shipwrecked off the coast of Finland in the Baltic Sea. Aboard the vessel, five bottles of beer and 150 bottles of champagne were found. Recently, the beer has been analysed using a mixture of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to determine its contents.

Among other things, the samples were investigated for their levels of acids, sugars, fermentation products – and, of course, alcohol. For comparison, the team from Finland and Germany also analysed six modern beers.

The results revealed that the beer was of the hop-heavy variety; the presence of high level beta acids and iso-alpha acids point to a strong hoppy flavour, as well as to the practice of boiling the wort. It was judged to be more acidic than modern beers and less alcoholic, weighing in at 3% ABV. Researchers noted that it had quite a pungent odour, smelling of “autolysed yeast, dimethyl sulphide, Bakelite, burnt rubber, over-ripe cheese and goat, with phenolic and sulphury notes.”

A Little Too Mature

Though alcohol often gets better with age, the same is not quite so true for beer. Regular strength beer of today generally has a shelf-life of three to four months in which time it will retain its optimum flavour. The shipwrecked beer, having been exposed to enzymes and microorganisms – as well as seawater – for more than 140 years, had understandably suffered “a deterioration in quality”, in the understatement of the century from the scientific team.

However, despite this degradation, chromatography was able to decipher some of the riddles of the beer’s original composition. An unusual kind of yeast was used in the fermentation process, while glucose was added after it – giving the local Stallhagen brewery a foundation to brew their own variant of the beer, named 1843 after the year in which the vessel sank.

Brian Gibson, a member of the team who analysed the bottles, believes they may have had a hand in recreating one of the most ancient ale recipes in history. “To our knowledge this is the oldest beer that has been chemically analysed in this way,” explained Gibson. Try telling that to experienced “alcohol archaeologist Patrick McGovern, who has had a hand in unearthing a 5,400-year-old ale recipe found in a Danish coffin. Together with Delaware-based Dogfish Head Brewery, McGovern successfully recreated a brew he has named Kvasir.

In fact, McGovern has even attempted to recreate a drink that is a whopping 16,000 years old! All of this using humble old chromatography.

Nice try, 1843 – but not quite old enough!