Turns out thieves can’t resist beer aged in sunken ship
BUENOS AIRES — It wasn’t exactly a sunken treasure.
But that apparently didn’t stop a team of divers in Argentina from going to extraordinary lengths to pilfer 700 liters, or 185 gallons, of artisanal beer that had been left by three local breweries to age, attached to a sunken ship, on the ocean floor.
The owners of the three breweries in Mar del Plata, which had teamed up with a diving school for what they described as a first-of-itskind monthslong experiment in deep-water beermaking, were left mystified, and heartbroken, upon discovering Tuesday that the barrels were gone.
“I started crying,” said Carlos Brelles, who runs the Thalassa Diving School in Mar del Plata, a coastal city 5 miles from the sunken ship. “Three or four people destroyed the work of so many.”
Brelles and the brewery owners said they have no clues that could shed light on the disappearance of the barrels, but they haven’t ruled out an act of sabotage. They asked prosecutors to open a criminal investigation.
It was a bitter end to an idea years in the making that was hatched over casual chats at the diving school.
Brelles, 52, having read news reports about beer that had been aged underwater in other countries, pitched the idea back in 2018 to a friend, Eduardo Ricardo, 40, one of the owners of Heller Brewery. And as the notion spread among beer enthusiasts in Mar del Plata, several took to the idea — but had a twist. Previous experiments had involved shallower depths, so they wanted to test beers made under greater pressure. They spent months securing permits to affix the barrels to the Kronomether, an abandoned Soviet-era ship 66 feet underwater that sank in 2014 and had become a favorite spot of recreational divers.
“No one had ever done this before,” said Juan Pablo Vincent, 43, master brewer at Baum brewery, who was involved in the effort.
The brewers settled on a dark, strong ale with an alcohol level of between 11% and 12%.
It took more than a year to obtain the necessary permits, and then quarantine measures slowed the endeavor, so the team was only able to lower the seven barrels of beer into the ocean Nov. 22.
The plan was to blend the content in the barrels with another beer. If all went according to plan, the brewers expected to be left with 1,000 liters, or 264 gallons, of a custom-made brew that would fill some 2,000 bottles.