Did Sir Isaac Newton use beer to write his manuscripts? Apple theory adds up...

It started with apples and now has moved on to beers. Was he a lover of the beverage? That is yet to be discovered.

We've all read the tales of how Sir Isaac Newton penned the theory of gravity, and the trivia around it is well-known. While apples do take the podium when it's about the theory of gravity, researchers have now revealed the ink that Newton used to pen his manuscripts had 'strong beer or ale' as an ingredient.

However, it is certain that the beer used to make the ink has stood the test of time, and the writings continue to be legible even centuries later.

A new finding by the UK-based Royal Society’s journal Notes and Records has unveiled that Newton used two kinds of inks with distinctly different ingredients in the recipe; one had a quart of wine and the other had beer.

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Prof Stephen Snobelen, from Dalhousie University and King’s College, who has extensively researched about Newton and has helped transcribe and publish his lesser-known manuscripts, has keenly spent 20 years studying Sir Isaac Newton’s personal beer flagon. Snobelen is of the belief that the physicist's work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica was written using that very ink, which has beer.

“Although chemical analysis of the ink in Newton’s voluminous manuscript corpus has yet to be carried out, many 17th-century authors used beer as a solvent in their homemade writing ink. Newton’s two surviving ink recipes confirm that he followed in this craft, at least while he was at Cambridge,” Snobelen was quoted in Telegraph.

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But did Newton partake?

Yes, but sparingly is what the study reveals. He used to consume ale with meals. The man who penned about gravity after watching apples fall also once asked which were apples to make the best cider. It is also said that Newton had gifted a flagon to his long-term flatmate and assistant John Wickins.