162-Year-Old Guinness Found in Shipwreck to Be Recreated

In 2025, diver Stefan Panis uncovered a sealed bottle of Guinness Extra Stout while exploring the Mindoro wreck, a British sailing barque that sank in the English Channel near Dover in 1864. This bottle was part of a beer shipment bottled in London by trade agent Cameron Saunders. Together with fellow diver Pawel Truszynski, Panis is spearheading Project Jurassic Beer, aiming to extract samples and revive 19th-century yeast strains with assistance from microbiological labs at KU Leuven in Belgium and the Guinness Archive in Dublin. Their objective is to recreate the beer's original flavor from 162 years ago. Additionally, they discovered around 20 other bottles in an upside-down wooden crate, which created a hydraulic seal. Research indicated the ship was intentionally sunk by another vessel's crew attempting to steal the cargo, but storms thwarted their plans. Truszynski referred to the find as a "time capsule of liquid history."