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Alcoholic drinks from Åland, Finland

Åland shipwreck beer (1840s), a recovered historical beer

Five bottles of beer were raised in 2010 from a schooner wreck lying at 48 m off Åland, along with bottles of champagne. VTT and partners found two different hopped beers that had been fermented by brewing yeast and then changed by bacteria and enzymes over about 170 years on the seabed. Live beer-spoilage lactic bacteria were recovered from the bottles; how the beer was brewed is inferred.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Åland shipwreck beer itself.

Short entryAlcoholic drinks170 years

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo recipe survives. The beer is known from chemical and microbial analysis of two of the five bottles.
hops, high in beta-acids, added before the wort was boiled

Total time across the recorded steps: 170 years

Start
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What changes: Hops boil in the wort and their bitter acids change form

Step 1 of 4
Boil the wort with hops
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Yeasts
Lactic acid bacteria

The hops were added before the boil, turning alpha-acids into iso-alpha-acids and beta-acids into hulupones. One beer was more strongly hopped than the other. Output: hopped wort.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Five bottles of beer were raised in 2010 from a schooner wreck lying at 48 m off Åland, along with bottles of champagne. VTT and partners found two different hopped beers that had been fermented by brewing yeast and then changed by bacteria and enzymes over about 170 years on the seabed. Live beer-spoilage lactic bacteria were recovered from the bottles; how the beer was brewed is inferred. Made in 4 steps over 170 years. The longest step, lie on the seabed, takes 170 years (Londesborough J 2015) and runs at 2–4 °C (Jeandet P 2015). Brewing yeast does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step170 yearsReported[londesborough2015]Lie on the seabed
Temperature2–4 °CReported[jeandet2015]Lie on the seabed

What makes this one different

This is not a living tradition but a recovered product. Its value is evidence of how a 19th-century hopped beer was made, and that live lactic beer-spoilage bacteria survived in the bottles.

Related ferments

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Found by side-scan sonar on 6 July 2010 in Åland's southern archipelago and salvaged that August and September with 162 bottles of champagne; one of the five beer bottles burst on recovery and one was sent to VTT.

  1. [londesborough2015] Londesborough J., Dresel M., Gibson B. et al. 2015, Analysis of beers from an 1840s' shipwreck, J. Agric. Food Chem. 63(9):2525–2536 (abstract)paper
  2. [kajala2018] Kajala I., Bergsveinson J., Friesen V. et al. 2018, Lactobacillus backii and Pediococcus damnosus isolated from 170-year-old beer recovered from a shipwreck lack the metabolic activities required to grow in modern lager beer, FEMS Microbiol. Ecol. 94(1):fix152 (abstract)paper
  3. [aland2011] Ålands landskapsregering / Museibyrån 2011, Champagnegaleasen – en marinarkeologisk undersökning (The Champagne Schooner, a maritime archaeological investigation)gov
  4. [scinews2015] Sci.News 2015, Chemists analyze beer from 1840s' shipwreck (news report of Londesborough et al.)web
  5. [jeandet2015] Jeandet P., Heinzmann S.S., Roullier-Gall C. et al. 2015, Chemical messages in 170-year-old champagne bottles from the Baltic Sea, PNAS 112(19):5893–5898 (the same wreck; gives the storage temperature)paper