Allsopp's Arctic Ale was brewed in 1852 for Captain Sir Edward Belcher and his crew who were to set out in search of Franklin's expedition. Belcher was not successful but, to his credit, one of his ships survived along with his crew. This bottle is infamous because of the Ebay incident where the original owner misspelled Allsopp as "Allsop" and sold the bottle for only a few hundred dollars. The winner of that auction turned around and reposted it there with correct spelling and more info. He/she got much better bids.
I guess this stuff was 10%+ ABV and was a barley wine. In Belcher's book, The Last of the Arctic Voyages, he says on page 21: "...Allsopp. That name will live for ages in the recollection of all Polars."
Belcher equipped at least one of his ships with brewing equipment and on page 339, he describes the results as being "much esteemed". Fuck, if I were north of the Arctic Circle with pack ice closing in, any beer would be highly esteemed by me. Still, they don't do adventures like that anymore. When did you ever hear about a space shuttle crew bringing a homebrew kit with them?
Some gentlemen are making a movie wherein the cycle up nort to the Arctic and recreate the brew. Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through just to brew a beer which leads me to believe its more of a publicity stunt than anything. If the pretty awful Brew Masters show is anything to go by, I can just imagine what this movie will be like. Camera must be moving at all times and use lots of canted angles because otherwise producers will assume viewers will just get bored. No shot can last more than 1 second - ibid. It'll have a cheesy metal soundtrack - ibid. It must have danger for repeats on Fox so they'll pull a Robert Flaherty and hire handlers to plant polar bears near the set. It'll be like Scott of the Antarctic!
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