Beer expert and historian Jordan St. John has teamed up Muddy York Brewing Co., an award-winning craft beer company in East York, to create a brand new beer based on a recipe from the 1800s.

The recipe was put together from notes in a diary by William Helliwell — the brewer at Todmorden Mill in the 1820s and 30s. Todmorden Mill was located at the bottom of Pottery Road.

"The great thing is that all of the brewing details, all the detail that makes the recipe for this beer is sprinkled throughout that diary," St. John told CBC News.

"He's not recording it because he's keeping track, he's recording it because it's just part of his day-to-day life. He's really more interested in the girl next door."

Based on the information in the diary, St. John said they were able to get a sense of the products Helliwell used to make beer.

The recipe was put together from notes in a diary by William Helliwell — the brewer at Todmorden Mill in the 1820s and 30s. 2:51

He was bringing in bushels of barley and wheat, St. John said.

"We even kind of know the variety of malt that he would have been using — probably six-row barley. They didn't really have the two-row barley here until the 1860s," he said.

"It's a lot of fun. We think he probably would have been malting with charcoal, so it would have been a little bit smokey. We have better equipment than he ever had … we even know the year of the equipment he was using. It's pretty amazing."

'A little bit sweet on the palates'

St. John believes they've been able to recreate a near replica of Helliwell's brew.

"It's nine and a half per cent alcohol and [Muddy York Brewing Co. has] a range of barley wines, so they're used to making things in this kind of genre," he said.

"In this case, what we've done is use a little bit of a trick to help sweeten it a little. It's got a little bit of additional sugar. It's sort of rounded and a little bit sweet on the palates. It's pretty good."

The new brew will be available to the public from Saturday.

Jeff Manol is the founder and head brewer at Muddy York Brewing Company. (Paul Borkwood/CBC)

Jeff Manol founder and head brewer at Muddy York Brewing says beer drinkers can expect something unique.

"It was a real pleasure to try and taste what might have existed back in the day. It was definitely a recipe that differs in a lot of ways to what we might do nowadays," Manol told CBC news.

"The result is pretty unique, I think. We've not made a beer here that taste close to this one."

Manol said apart from a change in equipment, the brewing process isn't a lot dissimilar today to what it would have been back in Helliwell's time.

He too said it was a lot of fun recreating Hellowell's brew.

"It was a lot of work but a lot of fun to make it," Manol said.

"There was definitely a lot of love in this, a lot of patience … waiting for this to mature and come of age so to speak. It was well worth it."

The Helliwell brothers. Beer expert and historian Jordan St. John has teamed up Muddy York Brewing Co., to create a brand new beer based on a William Helliwell recipe from the 1800s. (Jordan St. John/Twitter)

St. John explained that in the 1820s and 30s Todmorden Mill was a very prominent brewery within the City of Toronto, adding that there were probably only about four breweries from that era.

"The thing is, for most brewers, historically you don't really get a sense of who they are," St. John said.

"The fact that you are able to piece together based on the maps of the property and based on the details of the diary what the beer might have been like, that's kind of fascinating.

"And because you have a sense of the brewer, you can maybe intuit what choices he would have made," he added.

I want to tell you a story about the <a href="https://twitter.com/MYBrewingCo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MYBrewingCo</a> collaboration brew I have coming out Saturday. <br><br>It is based on the diaries of William Helliwell, who was the brewer at Todmorden Mill in Toronto up until the mid-1840's. <br><br>His diaries are the best story you've never read. —@saints_gambit

For St. John, the best part of the entire experience was getting a sense of the fact that brewing life is pretty much the same now as it would have been back in the 1800s.

"I know a lot of people in the brewing industry were not just brewers. They were going out there collecting kegs, sort of doing all of the work around the brewery that's not glamorous. A lot of it is cleaning, a lot of it is maintenance," he said

"At one point there's a sheet of ice that cascades down the Don Rover and it … floods [Helliwell's] cellar, and he has to go across town to get a pitch of yeast from another brewer. The amount of times that you see brewers getting pitches of yeast from each other in the modern era, it just happens constantly. It has not really changed at all."