Shipwreck Divers Discovered a 162-Year-Old Bottle of Guinness Brewed During the Reign of Queen Victoria—and They Want to Take a Swig

The beer was preserved in a sealed glass bottle and may be safe to sample. The team is also hoping to sequence the DNA of the yeast to recreate what the stout would have tasted like in the 19th century

Ellen Wexler | Writer and Special Projects Editor

August 12, 2026 1:28 p.m.

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If you dive to the Mindoro more than once, you’ll find that the shipwreck is always changing. The vessel has been resting in the cold, dark waters of the English Channel since the 19th century—but as currents shift, some parts of the site emerge from the sand, while others disappear into it.

Last year, when diver Stefan Panis explored the wreck with a friend, he stumbled upon a sealed bottle, which he decided to bring up to the surface. When he rinsed it off, he could read the words emblazoned on the seal: “Guinness Extra Stout, London.”

The Mindoro was a British sailing barque that sank on November 27, 1864, making this particular bottle of Guinness roughly 162 years old. Panis hadn’t known that the brand’s history stretched back that far. Unsure of what to do with the bottle, he shared his discovery with Pawel Truszynski, a fellow diver and researcher, who started making plans to investigate the beer.

“We immediately recognized that we weren’t just holding an old artifact,” Truszynski tells Smithsonian magazine. “We were holding a flawlessly sealed time capsule of liquid history.”

What would this bottle of Guinness have tasted like in the 19th century, during the reign of Queen Victoria? The two men wanted to find out, and they had a few possible paths forward: They could analyze traces of the yeast and try to recreate it. They could also just pop open the bottle and take a swig.

This particular bottle was found lying on the ocean floor, but Panis noticed others nearby that were still secured in wooden crates. Now, he and Truszynski need to determine how well the beer has been preserved at the wreck site, located roughly three miles off the coast of Dover.

“They were packed upside down, which under deep-sea pressure created a perfect natural hydraulic block, keeping the seawater out,” Truszynski says. If experts can determine that no seawater penetrated the bottle, bringing harmful bacteria with it, then the beer might be safe to drink.

The men sent samples from the bottle to KU Leuven, a university in Belgium, where microbiologist Kevin Verstrepen plans to analyze them in his lab. If the Guinness gets the green light, Truszynski will be one of the first in line to try it. “To taste a flavor profile that has been trapped in a vacuum since the Victorian era would be an unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime experience,” he says.

Panis, meanwhile, tells BBC News’ Adam Mandeville that he’s normally “not that big” of a Guinness fan. But if the testing determines that the beer is safe to drink, he will “of course” have to sample it for himself.

The two friends are also hoping to taste the stout a different way: by sequencing DNA from the beer’s yeast and attempting to recreate it. They’re calling this initiative Project Jurassic Beer.

Verstrepen tells the Washington Post’s Miriam Waldvogel that the beer’s original yeast may not have survived, but he’s optimistic about sequencing its DNA. If he’s successful, the researchers will be able to “see exactly where it is on this family tree, and then we can look for modern living siblings of that yeast,” he adds.

Guinness was founded in Ireland in 1759. This particular shipment was likely exported to London, according to Truszynski. After the bottles were loaded onto the Mindoro, the vessel departed on November 20, 1864. A week later, it collided with a ship called the Khersonese and sank. Fortunately, no crew members died in the disaster.

Although the wreck was discovered years ago, nobody had spotted the crates of Guinness until Panis’ recent dive. He wonders whether they had been covered by sand until recently.

“The story of the shipwreck is never-ending,” Panis tells the Irish Times’ Jack Brady. As conditions on the ocean floor change, artifacts will “appear one year and disappear the next year.”

The men have been in touch with representatives from the Guinness Archive about the find. “Discoveries like this provide a fascinating window into our past and help build a deeper understanding of our heritage,” a spokesperson for Diageo, the company that owns the brand, tells the Irish Times.

Later this month, the divers will return to the wreck site to recover more bottles. They’re hoping to send two of them to Guinness and another two to Verstrepen’s lab.

For now, Panis is storing the bottle he recovered in his garage, per Inc. magazine’s Lucia Auerbach. It’s submerged in water and kept in darkness, mimicking the conditions that preserved it at the bottom of the English Channel for more than a century.

Ellen Wexler is a staff writer and special projects editor, digital, for Smithsonian magazine.