The brew was likely a type of mead, a honey-based alcoholic drink that's still widely enjoyed today.Image credit: A. Aleksandravicius/Shutterstock.com
Posted on 03/13/2023 8:39:40 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Bones, ancient grooming tools, even gold – these are all things you might expect to find if you go poking around an Iron Age burial site. What you might not expect to find is your new favorite tipple. But, back in 2016, archaeologists were stunned to uncover a 2,500-year-old cauldron that contained the remnants of an ancient alcoholic beverage.
Project lead Bettina Arnold, from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, was investigating a burial mound – called a tumulus – dating back to between 400 and 450 BCE, when she and her team came across what appeared to be a bronze cauldron. But it wasn’t only the vessel itself that was largely intact...
That contents amounted to nearly 14 liters (3.7 gallons) of an unknown alcoholic beverage, that had been buried along with the occupant of the tumulus. As the researchers explained in a blog post, the cauldron full of booze, as well as the weapons he had been interred with... we can see how arriving in the afterlife with 14 liters of liquor could help with that.
Of course, the only logical next step for the team was to figure out if they could make some of the ancient brew and taste it for themselves. They enlisted the services of palaeobotanist Dr Manfred Rösch, who was able to analyze the cauldron contents and come up with a rough idea of the recipe...
The beverage was determined to have most likely been a type of mead called a braggot, whose origins go back way into the distant past, long before Chaucer mentioned it in his Canterbury Tales. And, luckily for Arnold and the team, one of the cellarmasters at local Milwaukee beer producers the Lakefront Brewery, Chad Sheridan, had a fair amount of experience brewing this particular drink.
(Excerpt) Read more at iflscience.com ...
The brew was likely a type of mead, a honey-based alcoholic drink that's still widely enjoyed today.Image credit: A. Aleksandravicius/Shutterstock.com
or it could have been the embalming fluid
either way
worth a try
Meh- I Drank Black Label Beer- cant get much worse than that lol
Are they saying that the cauldron still had 3.7 gallons of liquid in it?
If so that was one heck of a vessel and the stopper must have been amazing.
[snip] In the Celtic legend of Bran the Blessed, the cauldron appears as a vessel of wisdom and rebirth. Bran, mighty warrior-god, obtains a magical cauldron from Cerridwen (in disguise as a giantess) who had been expelled from a lake in Ireland, which represents the Otherworld of Celtic lore. The cauldron can resurrect the corpse of dead warriors placed inside it (this scene is believed to be depicted on the Gundestrup Cauldron). Bran gives his sister Branwen and her new husband Math — the King of Ireland — the cauldron as a wedding gift, but when war breaks out Bran sets out to take the valuable gift back. He is accompanied by a band of a loyal knights with him, but only seven return home. [/snip]
https://www.learnreligions.com/cerridwen-keeper-of-the-cauldron-2561960
Deja vu, all over again...
Lol. My first week in Vietnam I spent getting trained on gunboat engines by an alcoholic E5 who hid a case of Black Label in an empty steel hull on blocks in the summer sun. He wouldnt leave me alone until I pretended to drink one. God how horrible. 100 degree Black Label. Fowl and rancid. He’d pound it down. Shudder.
viking mead drinking songs | kye davis
28 videos | 75,749 views | Last updated on November 16, 2020
A Death in Swabia
July 15, 2016
Archaeology of Alcohol, Heuneburg
The next stage of the ancient alcohol flavorscapes story begins with the discovery and excavation of a grave.
https://sites.uwm.edu/barnold/2016/07/15/a-death-in-swabia/
Nice! Thanks.
Ancient Beverage Brewed In Milwaukee
Archaeology | 10-25-16 | NPR
Posted on 10/28/2016, 12:51:13 PM by fishtank
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3486008/posts
It is astonishing that 4 gallons of liquid could remain in a 2,500 year old cauldron. Rather hard to believe.
It could be that this was at least partly a hangover remedy.
A bit of hair of the dog in case waking up in the next world is somewhat rocky.
Ah, a magic cauldron! That explains its superior properties of preservation. :)
However, I don’t think giantesses expelled from boggy ponds in Ireland is any way to serve drinks.
Not that I’d want a drink from a jug that had a fetid warrior corpse stored in it. Probably smell too much like elderberries.
I’m not yet convinced that it wasn’t the brew that killed the poor fellow.
An interesting recipe just the same.
cheers!
Maybe they found an ancient potty ???
I can top that. Out here in the NY/NJ area years ago was this stuff called “Iron City Beer’’.
Tasted like sewer water but it did the job.
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