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What did the humans enjoy drinking  - and use to get merry - 9,000 years ago?

That's the question an 'alcohol archaeologist' has been attempting to answer, by tracing back some of the world's most ancient brews.

By analysing the residues found on fragments of pottery and studying references in texts, he has managed to recreate a number of ancient beers and wines that were all but lost to history.

Dr Patrick McGovern from the University of Pennsylvania Museum has been creating ancient alcoholic drinks. He collects residues from containers to recreate the drinks. The oldest he has made so far dates back 9,000 years in China, while another called Midas Touch (shown) is believed to have been drunk by King Midas himself

The beverages were brewed by Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware, who worked with Dr Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

To reveal what ingredients were needed, Dr McGovern analysed residues found at various archaeological sites around the world.

He detected traces of various ingredients left by the drinks - including barley, honey, herbs and spices - using a number of methods including liquid chromatography, gas chromatography and mass spectrometry.

The first drink that he recreated is named the Midas Touch, and is based on molecular evidence from residues found inside a Turkish tomb, believed to have belonged to King Midas, dating back to 700 BC.

A variety of alcoholic residues have been found inside important tombs around the world - suggesting that they were drinks used during celebrations or rituals and perhaps even to wish good luck to the dead in the afterlife.

The sweet and dry Midas Touch beer is made using honey, barley malt, white muscat grapes and saffron.

The oldest beer that Dr McGovern brewed is entitled Chateau Jiahu, the ingredients for which were discovered inside a 9,000-year-old tomb in China.

It is made using hawthorn fruit, sake rice, barley and honey, and is the oldest known fermented beverage in history - older even than wine.

While most simply involve the mixing of ingredients for fermentation, others required slightly more bizarre production methods.

For example, to make Chateau Jiahu, corn must be milled and moistened in the maker's mouth to convert starches in the corn into fermentable sugars - before it is 'spat' into the beer.

'All the drinks are centred around natural products of the regions,' Dr McGovern told MailOnline.

'These drinks represent speciality upper class beverages, used in kinds of ceremonies, religious rites festivals.' 

White muscat grapes, stock image pictured, are used in the creation of the Midas Touch drink - along with honey, barley malt and saffron - to create a sweet yet dry beer

Dr McGovern is pictured left, with Sam Calagione from Dogfish, in the process of making one of the ancient drinks. Shown right is a birch-bark bucket found in Denmark, which archaeobotanical evidence revealed to contain 'Nordic grog' dating back up to 1,500 years

The oldest drink made by Dr McGovern and Dogfish is Chateau Jiahu (shown), the ingredients for which were found in a 9,000-year-old tomb in China. It is made from hawthorn fruit, sake rice, barley and honey, and is the oldest known fermented beverage in history - older even than wine

Dr McGovern likens them to expensive cocktails today.

In particular, in northern Europe it was not possible to make wine, so it had to be imported from central or southern Europe, making it an expensive beverage.

'You had a great deal of social elite value to it,' he said. 'Just like today, you serve a fancy bottle of wine, but only certain [people] can afford it to impress the neighbours, it was the same thing in antiquity.'

With regards to finding the recipes to make the drinks, Dr McGovern has scoured texts to find out the various ingredients.

But he also gathers residues from certain ancient containers.

'Sometimes I'm just fortunate [in finding them], sometimes it took me on a grand tour,' he said.

The residues aren't always visible, though; most get absorbed into pottery, and must be extracted in a complicated process using solvents.

The drink called Ta Henket relied on ingredients from Egyptian hieroglyphics. It uses an ancient form of wheat and loaves of hearth-baked bread, with added chamomile and doum palm fruit (shown)

Pictured is an ancient Roman imported drinking-set, comprised of a bucket (situla), a ladle and strainer-cup nested together, and several 'sauce pans' or drinking cups, from a hoard under the floor of a settlement at Havor, Sweden in the southern part of the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, from the first century AD

A young blond woman, believed to be a priestess, was buried in an oak trunk coffin under a mound at Egtved in Jutland, Denmark between 1500 and 1300 BC. She was found with the birch-bark bucket pictured earlier. Wrapped in a cow hide, she wears a dancer's tasseled dress with a large bronze bronze disk

A 30-year-old woman was laid to rest in a wood coffin at Juellinge, Denmark around 200 BC, shown. Together with cosmetic items and jewelry, the woman held a long-handled bronze strainer-cup in her right hand, part of an imported Roman wine-set, including a bucket, ladle and incised glass beaker behind her head

Dr McGovern said his favourite is Chateau Jiahu, the oldest of the lot he has made, dating back 9,000 years.

'That's the one that I identify with most,' he said. 'It goes well with Asian food, it has a sweet and sour profile.'

Based on botanical evidence, Dr McGovern believes there may be an even older Egyptian drink from 16,000 BC that could be made, and that it is likely humans have been making alcoholic drinks for much, much longer.

'All animals are attracted to sugar and alcohol: insects, fruit fly, elephants,' he said. 'Humans would have known how to make an alcoholic beverage right from the beginning.'