Fancy a Pint of 162 Year-Old Guinness?
- 29 minutes ago
- 2 min read
A diver has discovered several bottles of the famous Irish stout in a shipwreck in the English Channel, about 3 miles off the coast of Dover.
When diver Stefan Panis explored the wreck of the Mindoro with a friend, he stumbled upon a sealed bottle, which he decided to bring up to the surface. When he rinsed it off, he could read the words emblazoned on the seal: “Guinness Extra Stout, London.” The Mindoro was a British sailing barque that sank on 27 November 1864, making this particular bottle of Guinness roughly 162 years old.
This particular bottle was found lying on the ocean floor, but Panis noticed others nearby that were still secured in wooden crates. “They were packed upside down, which under deep-sea pressure created a perfect natural hydraulic block, keeping the seawater out.” If experts can determine that no seawater penetrated the bottle, bringing harmful bacteria with it, then the beer might be safe to drink.
“We immediately recognized that we weren’t just holding an old artifact,” his diving buddy Pawel Truszynski tells Smithsonian magazine. “We were holding a flawlessly sealed time capsule of liquid history.” What would this bottle of Guinness have tasted like in the 19th century, during the reign of Queen Victoria? Unsurprisingly, the two men wanted to find out.
The men have sent samples from the bottle to a microbiologist to analyze them in his lab. If the Guinness gets the green light, then tasting the brew will go ahead. “To taste a flavour profile that has been trapped in a vacuum since the Victorian era would be an unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime experience,” he says.
However, Panis tells BBC News that he’s normally “not that big” of a Guinness fan. But if the testing determines that the beer is safe to drink, he will “of course” have to sample it for himself.
