Jerusalem (AFP)

Israeli researchers announced on Wednesday that they had succeeded in extracting old jars from yeast to make a beer similar to the one that Pharaohs drank more than 3,000 years ago.

The beer, with an alcohol content of 6% and a taste similar to a wheat beer, was presented to journalists, as well as a mead with an alcohol content of 14%.

At the counter of a bar in West Jerusalem, the journalists and researchers tasted in beer glasses, blond in color, and who still has no official name.

This is the first time that a beer is created with ancient yeast, assured researchers from the Israeli Antiquities Authority as well as three universities that worked on this project.

"When we brought this beer and sat around a table, we drank it, we raised a toast," said Aren Maeir, an archaeologist from Bar-Ilan University.

"And I said, either everything will be fine, or we will all be dead in five minutes, we have survived and we are here to tell this story," said Maeir.

The beer tasted on Wednesday was made with yeast dating back to around 3,000 years ago, the researchers said. But yeast 5,000 years old has also been found, according to the Antiquities Authority.

In total, six types of yeasts were extracted from jar debris found at archaeological sites. One of them was found in central Israel, near the scene of fighting in the Bible between giant Goliath and the future King David.

Other sites were in the southern Negev desert, which was part of Egypt's pharaohs, as well as in Tel Aviv and the Jerusalem area.

- "delicious" -

To brew beer and make mead from these yeasts, the researchers used modern methods. They also had to ferment their genomes.

The experiment held some surprises for scientists: one of the yeasts discovered is similar to that used in traditional beer in Zimbabwe, says Ronen Hazan, a microbiologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

And another has similarities to the one used in the manufacture of an Ethiopian mead called "Tedj", he adds.

In the future, researchers hope to trade modern methods through ancient recipes, and eventually market the beers obtained by this process.

For the purpose of this experiment was not only to recreate a drink that may be appreciated by the Pharaohs, but also to reconstruct the brewers' practices from millennia ago, says Professor Hazan.

"In addition to the pleasure of drinking beer from the time of the pharaohs, this research is extremely important for experimental archeology," he recalls.

"When we started this project, we understood that we were going to brew the product, get a beer, and that its taste would probably be similar, perhaps not identical but very close, to that of beer" tasted during Antiquity "recalls Yitzhak Paz, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority.

"Until now, researchers used ancient recipes with modern materials," says Paz. "This is the first time we use old substances to create an ancient beer."

And working on this project has also had some benefits ... including taste, confess the researchers.

"It was delicious, so I drink a lot of beer, so I can be a good judge," says Paz.

? 2019 AFP