It has been deep under water for more than 100 years and explorer Steve Hickman, a dive technician and amateur diver, was finally about to uncover it. Most people look for gold when diving for treasure, Hickman, however, sought after and found beer — row upon row of glass beer bottles.

The shipwreck Hickman stumbled upon back in the 1980’s when he began diving was the Wallachia, a cargo ship that sank in 1895 off the Scottish coast following a collision with another vessel in heavy fog. The Wallachia had just departed from Glasgow and was packed with various kinds of cargo, including large containers of a chemical called tin chloride. The ship also had thousands of bottles of alcoholic beverages aboard, many of which were preserved in the cold water where the ship lay on the seabed for more than a century.

In his years diving down learning about the shipwreck, Hickman has retrieved dozens of bottles containing whisky, gin and beer. But his recent visit turned out to be extra special. The bottles retrieved were handed to scientists at a research firm called Brewlab, who, along with colleagues from the University of Sunderland, were able to extract live yeast from the liquid inside three of the bottles. They then used that yeast in an attempt to recreate the original beer.

Click here to read about the entire discovery. 

Photos courtesy of Steve Hickman