Oldest beer recipe still produced?

I'm going to follow along here and see where this ball bounces because I'm not much of an historian even though I enjoy this kind of discussion, but I would tend to agree that old and ancient recipes can only be approximated. As people have said, differences in grain, yeast, hops, water, equipment, technique and such. It doesn't mean nobody should try, just that it can't be exact. Some things you can duplicate - process or equipment - but if you can only approximate the malt,. hops, and yeast it can only go so far. @JackHorzempa has good a point in that some "original" grains and hops are being revived - makes me think of the "heirloom" craze in gardening. I tinker with it myself, but in doing so I have really come to understand the value in things like modern virus free, high yield strains of tomatoes and the like... But if the grains and hops are anything like the vegetable varieties I have attempted to grow, I'd think they could potentially be quite ineffective in terms of cost - low yield, poor resistance, and what have you. There's a reason the modern varieties took over. I'm seeing it now with my little red fruit (for the second time in my 35 year career) with three brand new varieties being 90% of the new plantings.

One thing that immediately struck me reading Brew Like a Monk - even the monks don't brew like the monks once did. I think the first couple chapters, IIRC, is about how the brewing process and the "cherished" recipes/techniques changed in the monasteries over time. I remember commenting to my wife - hey, this is telling me how NOT to brew like a monk...until I got beyond the history part, at least.

To kind of bring it back to the OP, I don't believe (for reasons already stated) that the "oldest" beer being brewed is still in the absolute original form. If it has been continuously brewed from "opening day", then it would represent a continuum incorporating all of the changes in materials and methods that have taken place. It has to be a lot like my industry - somebody finds out "Hey...I can do XYZ and save time and cost, make life easier, or improve reliability of the product" and the cloning commences. Maybe it took longer "(way) back in the day", but I can pretty much walk into any mid-sized brewhouse (and lots of small ones) and and easily recognize all the pieces parts that have made brewing more efficient. And if Joe Brewer down the street is using this fabulous new malt that costs less, has a super-high starch content, and he's killin' it with sales, then sign me up I want some too... just wingin' it for an example... Point is, the process and products evolve over time - sometimes subtly, sometimes not.

 

Heck, my own local beloved brewery finds it hard to make the same beer twice... Sometimes.

 

Interesting discussion. I will stay tuned.

@rypkr did ask one direct question that no one has really tried to answer...

I think we all understand from the discussion so far that any answer would come with lots of caveats, but I would still be interested in people's best guesses as to what beer made today is the oldest and most like it's original. Would any beer historians care to speculate on this purely for fun?

 

Paging @jesskidden.

Randy, FWIW when a brewery says something along the lines of "brewed the same way since 18xx" to my mind that is utter marketing bullshit.

I took a tour of Shiner Brewery a few years ago and the marketing tagline for Shiner Premium was "This traditional, premium golden lager is inspired by our original recipe of 1909." I added the underline to highlight the marketing BS.

Cheers!

 

Oh absolutely... Or like Rolling Rock printing "...from the glass-lined tanks of Old Latrobe..." yeah right! There's a ton of beer marketing BS, but it's all the rampant BS out there makes me more interested in what older/classic beers actually could be closest to their original.

 

Well, another input I can give here are the recent Pabst 'recreations' of Ballantine IPA and Old Tankard. Decisions were made to utilize ingredients that were not available 'back in the day'; for example hop varieties that were not available then. From an ingredient perspective these two beers are not authentic.

Cheers!

 

I love the idea of dogfishead testing the clay pots to find out what was in them and then "recreating a recipe" Do I think it is authentic? No. Impressive science of course. I think the authentic "recipes" are the stuff @patto1ro digs up. The little scraps of paper form a diary or a journal entry . For the most part when there's too much science you can honestly say at some point, " you made that up." Then there is advertising. Did you have pabst old tankard? Do you think that beer resembles the style? "It does. It really does." ( is the sarcasm in the writing)