Using a yeast sample, an Ecuadorian beer 400 years old was revived.

A 400-year-old beer has been revived by Ecuadorian bioengineer Javier Carvajal using its yeast. The yeast sample was discovered by Carvajal inside an old oak barrel. It is thought to be the oldest beer in Latin America.

A single wood splinter was used to collect a single-cell bacterium. It ultimately served as the key to discovering the recipe for the beer that Franciscan priest Jodoco Ricke, who is of Flemish descent, brewed for the first time in Quito in 1566. He supposedly brought wheat and barley to what is now the capital of Ecuador, according to certain historians.

Carvajal told AFP: ‘Not only have we recovered a biological treasure but also the 400-year-old work of silent domestication of a yeast that probably came from a chicha and that had been collected from the local environment.’

Chicha is a fermented or unfermented beverage that originated in the Andes and Amazonia regions of Latin America. Before Spanish colonisation, the Indigenous inhabitants of the Americas prepared this beverage.

According to historians, the most popular type of Chicha during both the pre- and post-Spanish invasion periods was corn beer produced from a variety of maize landraces.

Carvajal claimed he learned about the historic Franciscan brewery in Quito while reading specialised beer journals, as reported by the news agency AFP. Interestingly, he was already familiar with recovering other yeasts.

He searched for a barrel from the previous brewery for a year before finding it in 2008.