re: 162-year-old Guinness bottle found in shipwreck that could reveal original recipe

That's a panis.

quote:

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I'm sure the malt bill (recipe) hasn't changed much, if at all. Guiness began brewing in 1759. The bottle was from the 1860s. The brewery had been operating for about 100 years when this bottle was made.

What they probably mean is the DNA of the grains used back then, and how they differ from today's varieties.

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Grains today, are highly modified for starch conversion which requires less involved brewing techniques to extract the sugars in the grain. I doubt any beer brewed decades ago would come close to the same as what we can do today. Not to mention, the cleaning and sanitizing practices we employ today did not exist back then. Old beer likely was not what we consider good by today's standards.

However, it is neat and interesting to try and recreate historical beers. Dogfish head did that with a few beers by examining the trace elements left behind in old clay pots from the egptians and even a "spit beer" that the ancient south american tribes used to make.

Even the sailors were shitlording the good stuff 200 years ago!