A 140-year-old bottle of beer has been sold for £3,300 at an auction. The beer Allsopp's Arctic Ale was brewed for an Arctic expedition.

It has been said that the beer was brewed in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, for an expedition led by Sir George Nares in 1875 to the North Pole. It was discovered in a box kept in a garage in Gobowen, Shropshire.

Auctioneers expected the beer would fetch £600 at the auction at Trevanion & Dean in Whitchurch. But it exceeded all expectations by selling for more than five times the amount.

The winner bid of $5,131 came from a private collector from Scotland, who was a telephone bidder.

Aaron Dean, a partner at the auctioneers said people on internet went crazy after the news about the beer was revealed.

Dean said there were three bidders in the room and there were some people on the telephone too. “It was a great historical object. We've all seen empty bottles from the 19th Century but this bottle went all the way to the Arctic circle and came all the way back, “ Dean said.

Sir George Nares was a Welsh naval officer; he was able to travel via a waterway between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, which is now named the Nares Strait. But he was not able to reach the North Pole.

It has been said that the explorers suffered from scurvy and poor equipment and were forced to move back.

The auction house said part of its appeal was the fact the bottle had been unopened for so long. Dean said it would be possible to drink the beer and his research suggests that it might taste sweet with a hint of tobacco.