PLAINFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. — "From the bonny bells of heather, they brewed a drink long-syne," wrote the Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson about his country's heather ale, one of the world's oldest beer styles that all but disappeared with the death of an Early Middle Age people.
On tap at Archival Brewing, the legendary brew has been recreated through archaeological evidence and a new batch is currently aging at the Plainfield Township restaurant by way of an archaic method.
"Predates Scotland, predates England, predates Europe as a continent," said owner Levi Knoll. "We don't have anything to compare it to because there's nothing available from that time."
As the Scottish legend goes, the Picts— indigenous to northern Britain — crafted a beer that "was sweeter far than honey, was stronger far than wine," according to Stevenson, believing it to give them great strength in battle.
But "there rose a king in Scotland," who hunted the Picts "like roes," sparing only a father and his son, from whom he demanded the secret recipe for the heather ale, protected and passed down by oral tradition.
"They were a victim of genocide," Knoll said.
With a voice "small as a sparrow's," the father said he would share the recipe if his son was killed: "I dare not sell my honor under the eye of my son," wrote Stevenson.
When the king cast the the son "far in the deep," the father revealed that he'd double-crossed the king for fear that his son would fork over the recipe: "For I doubt the sapling courage that goes without the beard."
The secret went with them both to the grave.
"Reading history books sucks. It's boring," Knoll said. "But the story that it tells about the people in that time, it brings a connection previously unknown."
When modern archaeologists did a molecular analysis of scrapings from clay vessels at a Scottish dig, they determined the ingredients of the heather ale.
"I knew I wanted to do it correctly," Knoll said. "Lots of reading, lots of not sleeping, going article to article."
Still, Archival Brewing's aptly named "Take It to the Grave" can't be a perfect recreation because the ale's original grains have since evolved or gone extinct.
Working toward a similar earthy taste, Knoll purchased three four-inch-thick terracotta pots handmade in Italy, referred to as amphoras. The earthenware is one of the oldest-known vessels for wine and beer, dating back to the Neolithic Era.
"They're not popular," Knoll said, believing his brewery to be the only location in Michigan to use amphoras for the brewing of beer. "I searched pretty hard to find them."
When ready to be served this year, Knoll says the new batch of "Take It to the Grave" will tell the story of the Picts and the alcohol they drank in a better, more historically accurate way: "Why they would have make a beer through taxes, through hardships, through poverty or wealth."
