Ancient beverage producing yeasts Raw sequence reads. Ascomycota

Previous attempts to reconstruct ancient fermented beverages relied on ancient recipes or chemical residues, using modern yeast. By screening 28 ancient vessels suggested to contain fermented beverages, we isolated and grew five beverage-producing yeast strains. Two from Egyptian sites (3100 BCE) and two from Philistine (850 BCE) "beer jugs," were similar to yeasts in traditional African beers. The fifth yeast is a mead (honey wine)-associated yeast which was isolated from a Persian period (400 BCE) jar thought to contain mead. More than 100 control samples from these sites did not yield beverage producing yeasts. The beverages produced by the isolated yeasts were analyzed chemically and by certificated beer tasters. This work demonstrates the ability to isolate and grow ancient yeasts that have survived for thousands of years, and to produce and study ancient beverages derived from authentic ancient yeasts.