Article: Beer Archaeologists Are Reviving Ancient Ales — With Some Strange Results
Posted: Sun May 26, 2019 2:08 pm
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/20 ... ge-results
"The one thing that we've been really quite surprised by is not a single one of them is undrinkable," he says. "Every one of them has gotten done and we're like, 'That is so weird. That is just so cool.' "
There's the Viking-inspired beer based on information gleaned from sagas and the debris of ancient shipwrecks. It's made with juniper branches and baker's yeast, which gives it a slight but surprising whiff of banana. (Rupp regrets that he had to ferment it in regular brewing equipment rather than a more historically accurate trough made from a freshly cut and hollowed out juniper tree.)
Another, called Beersheba, is based on references and artifacts primarily from Israel. It involves three types of grain and pomegranate juice, in the style of King Zimri-Lim, who, Rupp read, was known to send slaves into the mountains to get snow for his icehouse so that his beer could be served cold. It's one of Rupp's personal favorites, despite smelling a little like baby spit-up and tasting like a funky fruit rollup.
A beer called Benedictus came about when Rupp teamed up with a couple of Italian monks to re-create a monastic recipe calling for wormwood and lavender and dating to A.D. 825. It smells like a spicy men's shampoo and tastes like drinking an herb garden. The Peruvian chicha, on the other hand, is sour and summery.
The brewery's latest is a porter meant to show what George Washington would have been swigging at Mount Vernon during his retirement years.
"It's also maybe a little too drinkable, as I would attest on the first night that this got released," says Rupp.