World's 'oldest beer' found in shipwreck

[mike r]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/03/baltic.sea.beer/?hpt=T2

World's 'oldest beer' found in shipwreck
By Les Neuhaus, CNN

(CNN) -- First there was the discovery of dozens of bottles of 200-year-old champagne, but now salvage divers have recovered what they believe to be the world's oldest beer, taking advertisers' notion of 'drinkability' to another level. Though the effort to lift the reserve of champagne had just ended, researchers uncovered a small collection of bottled beer on Wednesday from the same shipwreck south of the autonomous Aland Islands in the Baltic Sea.

"At the moment, we believe that these are by far the world's oldest bottles of beer," Rainer Juslin, permanent secretary of the island's ministry of education, science and culture, told CNN on Friday via telephone from Mariehamn, the capital of the Aland Islands. "It seems that we have not only salvaged the oldest champagne in the world, but also the oldest still drinkable beer. The culture in the beer is still living." Juslin said officials had talked to a local brewer about whether the new-found beer might be able to yield its recipe after experts decipher the brew's ingredients.

The newest find came as divers unearthed bottles separate from the earlier champagne find. While lifting a few to the surface, one exploded from pressure. A dark fluid seeped from the broken bottle, which they realized was beer. All the cargo on the ship -- including the beer and champagne -- is believed to have been transported sometime between 1800 and 1830, according to Juslin. He said the wreck was about 50 meters deep (roughly 164 feet) in between the Aland island chain and Finland.

The cargo was aboard a ship believed to be heading from Copenhagen, Denmark, to St Petersburg, Russia. It could have possibly been sent by France's King Louis XVI to the Russian Imperial Court. "Champagne of this kind was popular in high levels and was exclusive to rich groups -- it was not a drink for common people then," Juslin said. Experts estimated the exclusive bubbly to be worth tens of thousands of euros per bottle. The value of the beer has not been determined...

[TransitJohn]

1. Dibs!

:beer:

[Uncle Joe]

2. A shipwreck! How apropos, just more evidence that alchohol is more dangerous than pot.

Had it been the world's oldest stash it would have been given a place of honor in the owner's tomb.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3620778

Source: THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA – Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.

The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

Thanks for the thread, mike.

[scarletwoman]

5. Okay, this is just TOO weird - I just re-read that entire thread YESTERDAY!

Last night I was perusing some old pm exchanges from 2008 and in one of them was a link to that very thread. I remembered the thread -- I had posted on it -- so I clicked on the link and read all the way through it.

One of funniest threads ever -- it's just as entertaining 2-1/2 years later as it was back then.

Now, seeing you post the link TODAY, and thinking back in particular to what I said in my post in that thread -- was I right or what! :smoke:

Spooky, man...

:rofl:
sw

[Nailzberg]

3. Sweet, cause I just found the world's oldest nachos.

[anthroguy101]

4. lol nt

[Raschel]

6. So they'll be needing experts to decipher the ingredients...