Dr. Patrick McGovern looks nothing like Harrison Ford.
The 66-year-old Scientific Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia has earned a few nicknames during his career, including “the Indiana Jones of alcohol,” “the beer archeologist” or “the Lazarus of libations.”
With a floppy mane of gray and a bushy white beard to match, he looks more like St. Nick than a Spielbergian cinematic hero. But when he speaks on one of his areas of expertise—ancient fermented beverages—people realize how he earned those nicknames. Although he’s a noted academic scholar on the subject, McGovern can break down chemical analysis and ancient history into terms that even Joe Sixpack can understand.
“Alcohol is the universal drug,” McGovern says during a phone interview from his office in Philadelphia. “The rise of alcohol around the world happened for a number of reasons,” he adds. “It’s a social lubricant; there are dietary issues involved when sugar and alcohol are converted into energy; and then there are mind-altering effects where you feel like you are in contact outside of yourself.”
We first met McGovern at the Getty Villa in Malibu in June, where hundreds of people packed the museum’s auditorium to hear his lecture Uncorking the Past: Ancient Ales, Wines, and Extreme Beverages. “Archeology, in terms of beer and wine, bridges science and the humanities,” he told the rapt audience.
To McGovern, the history and study of alcohol often tells a story about the history of culture itself.
After the program, attendees then sampled the three of the beers he discussed in his lecture—Midas Touch, Theobroma and Chateau Jihau—which McGovern helped create in concert with Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales, one of the top craft brewers in the country. The lecture gave the audience a taste of history—literally.
Midas Touch, their first collaboration in 1999, is a beer based on what was probably served at King Midas’ funerary feast. (In many ancient cultures, the VIPs received one heck of a send-off to the afterlife and were even buried with enough food and drink to keep them well-nourished.)
Midas’s tomb, found buried beneath a large mound in Central Turkey, was first excavated by Penn Museum workers in 1957. Inside the chamber, which dates to around 700 BC, were a number of bronze vessels and buckets used for serving the beverage. McGovern was more interested in the leftover residue than in the vessels themselves.
The chemical analysis showed that the beverage therein was a mixture of grape wine, barley beer and honey mead. At a Penn dinner honoring beer expert Michael Jackson nearly a dozen years ago, McGovern challenged the brewers in attendance to make something drinkable out of those ingredients. Calagione’s concoction won the challenge.
“He made a beverage as a honey, barley beer and used plum instead of grapes,” said McGovern. He also substituted hops—a key ingredient in beer making—with saffron. Although the thought of mixing beer and wine doesn’t seem palatable to modern drinkers, Midas Touch clearly makes it work. The beverage has won numerous awards in beer competitions, including a bronze medal in the 2008 World Beer Cup.
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