After almost 140 years, it still tasted good and revealed secrets: scientists have tasted Germany’s oldest surviving bottled beer and examined it in terms of food technology. According to the brewery experts, the results reflect fundamental developments in industrial beer production. The astonishingly well-preserved drink from Northern Germany was therefore a bottom-fermented lager that had already been produced using state-of-the-art processes at the time.
Everywhere, and especially in Germany, it flows in enormous quantities: beer is one of the most popular alcoholic beverages in the world. Enjoying the different forms of the grain-based brew has a tradition going back thousands of years. In ancient Egypt, for example, beer was already being mass-produced around 5,000 years ago. As is well known, brewing also has deep roots in Germany. The so-called purity law has become a national cultural asset. The basis of this rule for the permitted ingredients in German beer is a regulation from 1516 in Bavaria.
A “relic” from the German imperial era
A team of scientists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) is now reporting on the current beer-historical event. The bottled beer examined was found in a north German commercial building. The reconstruction of the label and the characteristics showed that it had been made by the still existing brewery Barre in Lübeck in 1885. Research showed that around 300,000 such bottles were exported to New York, among other places, every year. But the bottle with the designation B1885 was left behind for reasons that are not clear, and as a result became a brewery-historical treasure: The green 750 milliliter bottle was still full, sealed with a cork, wire and wax and had been stored at room temperature for around 140 years.
Now the researchers decided to open the historical piece. First, a team of four experts ventured a “sensory” assessment: they sniffed the contents and finally took a sip. As they report, the drink had not turned into a “mummified” abomination: “It still smelled and tasted quite excellent and was very harmonious in overall impression and bitterness. A very lean, elegant beer,” sums up Martin Zarnkow from TUM.
A bottom-fermented, filtered lager
According to the experts, the beer was still slightly fizzy and had aromas of sherry, port and plum. Despite the astonishingly good state of preservation, there were also indications of the consequences of age: the color may have originally been lighter and chemical changes in the hop components over the course of almost 140 years could have led to changes in the bitter note, the scientists write.
After the tasting, they also subjected the contents of the bottle to an archaeochemical analysis in order to record the composition and to gain information on the production method. The team then compared the obtained profile of the historic beer with numerous modern varieties. It turned out that the characteristics of B1885 already corresponded to today’s light lager beers. It also became clear that the beer brewed according to the Purity Law had already been filtered. The researchers point out that this happened just a few years after the invention of the first filtration apparatus.
As for the brewing method, the analysis results indicated that the lager was brewed using a bottom-fermented process. This manufacturing process requires a temperature of just a few degrees Celsius and only became possible all year round with the invention of the refrigeration apparatus by Linde in the 1870s. The bottom line is that the test results of the historic beer provide interesting insights into the brewing culture of the late 19th century, when groundbreaking innovations laid the foundation for industrial beer production, the scientists summarize.
Source: Technical University of Munich, specialist article: Scientific Reports, doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-12943-6