Tasters taste beer from 140 years ago and find a "lean and harmonious flavor"

Slender, elegant and harmonious: this is how tasters judge the taste of a beer which is almost 140 years old, after testing the historic drink for a project at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). They tasted aromas of sherry, port and plums, among other things. “It was very harmonious in overall impression and bitterness,” said Martin Zarnkow, head of technology and development at the Weihenstephan Research Center for Beer and Food Quality, in a statement released Tuesday. The beer still smells and tastes great, the document adds.

According to the university, the bottle that was filled in 1885 was kept in northern Germany and was found in a commercial building during cleanup work. Thus, it comes from the private Barre Brewery, a brewery in Lübbecke in the Minden-Lübbecke district of North Rhine-Westphalia. The beer was constantly stored at room temperature and sealed with cork, wire and wax.

In their research, however, the scientists were not only concerned with the taste of beer from the imperial era. They also analyzed the molecular profile of beer at the Chair of Food Analytical Chemistry. The research showed that the historic beer signature is comparable to modern industrially brewed beers, plus strong oxidation of hop components.

After comparing the chemical signature to that of 400 modern national and international beers, the researchers classified the sample as a typical pale lager. The comparison resulted in “a database that now makes it possible to understand the technology behind a product. Something we’ve been doing for a long time, but until now we haven’t been able to put it on a statistically sound basis,” Zarnkow continued.

Historical beer research allows scientists to draw conclusions about the brewing methods of the time. They found, for example, that beer was made through a bottom fermentation process and then filtered.

Another interesting discovery: the beer had been brewed in accordance with the Purity Law, although that was not mandatory in the region at the time. “But it was made according to the Purity Law and fully corresponded to the characteristics published at the time, apart from the color,” Zarnkow said. The famous purity law comes from Bavaria, in 1516 it was enacted in Ingolstadt as a state regulation. It stipulated that beer could only consist of water, malt and hops, later adding yeast as an ingredient.