A brewer plans to open up a 150-year-old bottle of beer, made for an Arctic expedition, so a modern version can be created.
The original Allsopp’s Arctic Ale was bottled in Burton-upon-Trent for Sir George Nares, when he set out to reach the North Pole in 1875.
It was later discovered in a box in a garage in Gobowen, Shropshire, and sold at auction for £3,300 in 2015.
The buyer was Dougal Gunn Sharp, founder and master brewer of Edinburgh-based Innis & Gunn, and he now plans to use the ale to seed a new limited-edition beer.
Samuel Allsopp & Sons in Burton-upon-Trent designed the beer for sailors enduring temperatures as low as -40C and it had an alcohol strength of about 9%.
The beer was said to resist freezing because of its unfermentable sugars and it had six times the calorie content of conventional beer.
It was used on a number of British Arctic expeditions and records from the time said it was dark brown and so thick it had to be lifted from the brewing copper in buckets.
Mr Sharp plans to work in partnership with Allsopp’s Brewery on the new beer, which will be called Innis & Gunn 1875 Arctic Ale.
He said: “Some people might think it’s madness to open it, but I think the real madness would be to leave it sitting on a shelf.
“Beer is meant to be shared, particularly on this, its 150th anniversary.”
Mr Sharp also said there was “something very special” about being able to taste a “piece of brewing and maritime history”.
Jamie Allsopp, founder of the revived Allsopp’s Brewery and a direct descendant of Samuel Allsopp, said there was “something uniquely romantic about Allsopp’s Arctic Ale”.
He said the beer was “one of the strongest and most extraordinary beers ever made” and he said when he was first approached by Mr Sharp with the idea of making a new version “I honestly thought he was mad.”
The idea of using the original beer to create a new one was “a kind of alchemy”, he said.
The new beer will be released later this year, with a small number of hand-bottled examples sold through a ballot.
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