"Alester Miracle" (Credit: Erik S. Peterson)

Today's craft beer revolution is marked by wild, boundless innovation, with brewers using oysters, spruce tips, Spirulina, and even smoked Mangalitsa pig heads in the quest for flavor. But why reinvent the wheel when you can tap into history? What's old is new again, as craft breweries are unearthing bygone recipes and bringing them back to delicious life. From hop-less beers spiced with bog myrtle and nettles to potions inspired by drinking vessels from King Midas's tomb, here are a handful of our favorite tastes of the past.

Williams Bros. Brewing Co.: Historic Ales From Scotland

Scotland's rich brewing history fuels this venerable brewery's catalog of vintage ales. They include Alba, flavored with sprigs of spruce and pine; Kelpie contains fresh seaweed, which harkens back to coastal Scottish breweries that concocted beer with seaweed-fertilized barley; the fruity Ebulum, with its recipe dating back to the 16th century; and the floral, lightly peaty Fraoch, based on heather ale, which has been brewed in Scotland since 2000 B.C.

Dogfish Head: Ancient Ales

Few breweries are as committed to history as Dogfish Head. Since 1999, the Delaware brewery has collaborated with Dr. Patrick McGovern, the Scientific Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, to revive dead drinks. Drinking vessels from King Midas's tomb inspired the sweet, wine-like Midas Touch. Shards of Honduran pottery contained a chocolate-based alcoholic potion that led to the cocoa-heavy Theobrama ("food of the gods"). And molecular evidence from drinking vessels salvaged from Italy's 2,800-year-old Etruscan tombs was the basis for the Birra Etrusca Bronze, which was concocted with root beer-like Ethiopian myrrh resin, honey pomegranates, and bitter gentian root.

Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project: Once Upon a Time

One of the world's foremost brewing historians is Ron Pattinson, who digs up dusty recipes and brewery for his website, Shut Up About Barclay Perkins. Massachusetts-based Pretty Things has re-created a few of those old brews in collaboration with Pattinson, including the 1855 East India Porter, 1879 East India Pale Ale and the dark, hoppy, dry-drinking 1901 KK.

The Kernel: Export Stout

While the London brewery is helping lead the city's craft beer revolution with its thoroughly modern, hopped-up pale ales, it looked to a recipe from 1890 for this obsidian stout. The result is rich and almost oily, with flavors of dark fruit and eye-propping espresso.

Fuller's: Past Masters

This British brewery has its own "bible," a book cataloging every recipe developed since 1845. In conjunction with Pattinson (the man likes his historical beers!), Fuller's has begun releasing vintage formulations under the Past Masters mantle. To date, they've featured the creamy, fruity Double Stout, originally brewed on August 4, 1893, and the rich XX Strong Ale, which was first brewed on September 2, 1891. Unfortunately, the beers are not currently exported to the United States.

Gruit

Today, it's a given that beer contains four foundational ingredients: water, yeast, malt and hops. In the Middle Ages, though, gruit (pronounced "grew-it") replaced hops as the major flavoring agent. Basically, gruit was a proprietary blend of bitter and astringent yarrow (a flowering plant), wild rosemary and resinous, eucalyptus-like wild gale, along with whatever spices caught the brewer's fancy. In large doses, gruits were considered euphoric stimulants and aphrodisiacs, and brewers often enhanced the effects with psychotropics such as henbane. Though hops largely replaced gruit by the 1700s, modern brewers are once more acting Medieval. Try these:

Brasserie Dupont: Posca Rustica

The Belgian farmhouse brewery flavors its delicate gruit with around a dozen herbs and spices, including sweet woodruff and gale. Cambridge Brewing Company: Weekapaug Gruit

The Massachusetts-made gruit is spiced with gale, nettles, wild rosemary and licorice. Earth Eagle Brewings

Based in Portsmouth, New Hampshie, the offbeat brewery specializes in gruits such as Love Potion #9, which is brewed the aphrodisiacs yohimbe bark and muira puama. Some things never change.

Joshua M. Bernstein has written for The New York Times, New York, Details, Saveur and Imbibe*, where he's a contributing editor. In addition, Bernstein is the author of* Brewed Awakening, the editor of Craft Beer New York, and lives in Brooklyn, where he drinks plenty of beer and leads homebrew tours.

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