An idea that began when a classicist went to a brewery to sip beers and ponder the history of hops has brought to life an ancient ale.
It took hours of translating, milling, and baking, but Canadian ale experimenters in Winnipeg have finally sipped a beer created from a fourth-century Egyptian alchemist’s recipe.
“If you expect this to taste like a modern beer, you are not going to find that,” said Matt Gibbs, chair of the University of Winnipeg’s Department of Classics.
“This beer is very, very sour. It’s good. It’s much better than I thought it was when we first did it, I will say that much, but it’s different.”
Gibbs got the idea while sitting at a bar talking about old beers with a pair of brewmasters at the Barn Hammer Brewing Company. The original recipe was found in “The Barbarian’s Beverage: A History of Beer in Ancient Europe” by Max Nelson at the University of Windsor.
It was chosen because Gibbs figured he could stay close to the original process and, unlike some of the other recipes, the ingredients were available and legal.
According to a post on the website of the University of Winnipeg, the beer was created by first making sourdough bread made from water and barley flour. Gibbs then took 18 hours to cook the bread on low heat to keep the enzymes alive, and the bread was submerged in a fermenter at Barn Hammer. The beverage then transformed over the course of two weeks into a “very sour golden pint.”
“Personally, it’s too sour for me,” Gibbs said, according to the University of Winnipeg News Centre. “But that’s part of the experiment: how much have our palates changed over time? Because, for example, now there’s sugar in almost everything now.”
