They’re gonna party like it’s 399.
Researchers in China discovered the ultimate “aged” brew after happening upon a vessel containing nearly a gallon of still-liquid beer that dated back some 2,200 years, per a study in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
“What surprised us even more was the very large volume and the exceptional state of preservation,” Ruru Chen, a researcher at Northwest University’s School of Cultural Heritage in Xi’an, China, told Fox News Digital.
The researchers had been excavating the Shanjiabao cemetery in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, whereupon they discovered 183 tombs dating back to the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.), a tumultuous time when rival kingdoms vied for primacy ahead of the country’s unification.
One of the Qin tombs housed a bronze vessel containing a whopping 3.74 liters — more than 15 cups — of the ye olde brew, potentially marking one of the “largest volumes of alcoholic beverage residue ever recovered” from the time period, per Chen. Most ancient booze finds, by contrast, generally amounted to trace amounts in a container.
The vessel gave off “no noticeable odor” while the liquid “appeared clear and light blue-green” and was accompanied by sediment.
By combining organic chemistry and other disciplines, the team was able to deduce that the hooch was “similar to a non-distilled alcoholic beverage made from millet, or from a mixture of millet and wheat/barley,” according to Chen.
“It would not have resembled a distilled spirit,” she said while detailing the “exceptionally rare discovery.”
Some researchers believed that the giggle juice was placed in the tomb as a gift so the decedent could enjoy themselves in the afterlife — it appeared that their spirit lived on in more ways than one. History.com reported.
How did this ancient beer stand the test of time?
Chen theorized, “The relatively dry local environment may have played an important role, but we also suspect that factors such as the bronze vessel itself, its sealing method and the burial conditions contributed to its preservation.”
They hope to shed light on this alcoholic fountain of youth in future studies.
Coincidentally, this follows the 2024 discovery of beer in a 2,300-year-old Qin state tomb in China’s Shaanxi province. This ancient lager had been brewed from wheat or barley, as well as a type of millet, pulses and grass seeds.
“These finds provide valuable archaeological support for textual references to increasingly specialized brewing techniques during the late Zhou and Qin periods [between about the 8th and 3rd centuries B.C.],” said archaeologist Li Liu of Stanford University, whose team made the latter discovery.
Interestingly, these millennia-old malts aren’t old by Chinese standards. Researchers previously found evidence of 9,000-year-old rice booze with honey and fruit in clay jars in China’s Henan province.
Meanwhile, the oldest tipple ever found entailed traces of wheat- and barley-based beer found in 13,000-year-old stone mortars in a cave in Israel.
Liu noted that these fermentation fossils “accounts for the oldest record of man-made alcohol in the world.”
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