Abstract
Historical beers are a valuable source of information on past brewing microbiology providing opportunity for analysis and isolation. Although rarely found intact and suffering variable degrees of deterioration they can contain living microbial cells and residues of chemical components indicating the character of the beers and their production processes. This report summarises preliminary analysis of two beers from Victorian and Edwardian times and provides an indication of their chemistry and microbiology. One beer, recovered from the 1895 Scottish shipwreck Wallachia, was a 7.5% ABV stout, the other an 11% ABV celebration King's Ale, a barley wine, brewed by Bass in 1902 for the visit of King Edward VII. Live yeast was isolated from both beers: Brettanomyces and Debaryomyces from the Wallachia stout and Saccharomyces from the Bass Ale. Ribosomal DNA amplicon sequencing indicated the presence of a wide range of microorganisms in both beers including lactobacilli and pediococci in the Wallachia beer and staphylococci in the Bass Ale. Both beers are likely to be in the category of stock ales of the time and would have been matured for a period before bottling. The presence of Brettanomyces bruxellensis in both beers confirms the understanding of this species as an important contributor to these beers but it is also interesting that Debaryomyces species are consistently present as a major component and that Saccharomyces are less prevalent. © 2021 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling
Highlights
Bioarchaeology is a dynamic field of study with considerable relevance to the food industries in retrieving information on past foods and beverages [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Chemical analysis of basic beer characteristics of alcohol by volume, specific gravity, colour, pH and bitterness are reported in Table 1 for the three Wallachia samples
The same microorganism was isolated from broth incubated at a later time with samples of the cork
Summary
Bioarchaeology is a dynamic field of study with considerable relevance to the food industries in retrieving information on past foods and beverages [1,2,3,4,5,6]. A pertinent issue in brewing microbiology around 1900 was the application of pure Saccharomyces yeast cultures developed by Hansen at the Carlsberg laboratory in 1888 These were readily adopted by continental breweries as providing more controlled production and purer beers [14]. Application to UK brewing was, less positively received, in part because of the belief that British beers possessed particular flavours arising from mixed yeast cultures and, the involvement of Brettanomyces species. This was especially believed to be essential for the character of ‘stock’ ales which were matured for extended periods [15]. Since the 1940’s a more biotechnological approach to fermentation demonstrated the value of pure culture and was progressively applied to the larger breweries developing at that time
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