Have you ever wondered what was the taste of King David’s beer?

Fermented beverages and foods hold great importance today in general and in the ancient world in particular and until now most of the studies on ancient microorganisms and fermented food have been based mainly on ancient DNA techniques and residue analysis.

We began several years ago in our laboratory to wonder if the ability of microorganisms to survive thousands of years in harsh conditions can help archaeologists get more information about potteries found in excavations. In a previous study, we developed a pipeline of yeast isolation from clay vessels, screened for yeast cells in beverage-related and non-beverage-related ancient vessels, and found that yeast cells could be successfully isolated specifically from clay containers of fermented beverages. The isolated yeast strains and their genomes, and were characterized and we found that they grow similar to modern beer-producing yeast, strongly suggesting that they are descendants of the original fermenting yeast. Also, the isolated yeasts produced aromatic and flavored beer!