A brewer is hoping to restore a flavour of pre-revolution Russia to the former Soviet Union.

Lewes-based Harvey and Sons has created its super-strength Imperial Extra Double stout using techniques and a recipe based on those used in Estonia almost 90 years ago.

One consignment of the beer has already been sent to America to great acclaim.

Another batch is now being produced with half earmarked for the UK market.

Head brewer Miles Jenner said if there was the demand he would be keen to export the stout back to Russia and other former Soviet countries in the future.

He said: "There is a trade mission to Russia later this year and I am certainly thinking of taking along some of the beer."

The brew is much richer and darker than many on the market today and, with a 9.5 per cent alcohol content, packs a punch.

Mr Jenner said: "It is very much what would have been drunk by our forebears in Georgian times.

"The name of the beer goes back to the Belgian Albert Le Coq.

"In the early 1800s he exported strong stouts from England to the Russian Baltic area.

"They had lots of dark- coloured malts and had to be strong to last the journey.

"Albert Le Coq was invited by the tsarist Russian government to brew within the empire and in 1912 he started at Tartu, which is now in Estonia.

"After the Russian Revolution his brewery was nationalised by the Bolshevik government and then closed."

Mr Jenner said he had been approached by an American beer importer last year who had also approached the Le Coq brewery about recreating the Imperial Extra Double Stout.

He said there was no recipe remaining but they had used a blend of black, brown and amber malts alongside the usual pale malts to create an authentic flavour.

The stout also contains an unusually high proportion of hops, some four to five times the usual amount.

It is brewed for more than a year, partly in the bottle.

Mr Jenner said that due to the length of brewing, wild yeast, which would not usually get a chance to aid the fermentation process, came into play.

He said it was apt Harvey and Sons had been approached to recreate the stout as Lewes had other notable links with the former USSR.

A town pub is said to have been the setting in 1929 for a meeting between the then British foreign secretary and the Soviet ambassador in Paris about restoring diplomatic relations after the Communist revolution.

The town held about 250 Russian prisoners captured during the Crimean War 75 years earlier.