A bottle of beer that’s been around for approximately as long as it takes to sing “99 Bottles of Beer” is set to finally be opened.
According to the BBC, the bottle of Allsopp’s Arctic Ale has sat closed for 150 years. It was originally set to accompany British explorer Sir George Nares on an expedition to the North Pole in 1875, but ended up in a box that was discovered decades later in an English garage. The box was then sold at auction in 2015 for about $4,350.
The winning bidder, Dougal Gunn Sharp, now plans to open the bottle in an effort to recreate it and sell widely.
“Some people might think it’s madness to open it, but I think the real madness would be to leave it sitting on a shelf,” Sharp says. “Beer is meant to be shared, particularly on this, its 150th anniversary.”
Even still, we’ve seen enough horror movies to know that opening something that has been closed for a long time isn’t always a good idea. Hopefully, this doesn’t turn into a new franchise, Final Inebriation.
Assuming no evil spirits are released, bottles of Innis & Gunn 1875 Arctic Ale will be available later in the year.