MUNICH — Lager, the world’s most popular beer, originated more than 400 years ago in Bavaria due to a brewing accident, according to recent study. Researchers say the yeast used for brewing cold beer, known as Saccharomyces Pastorianus, emerged at the court of Maximilian the Great in Munich. This was the result of an accidental encounter and subsequent mating of two distinct yeast strains. The hybrid yeast is notable for its slower fermentation rate at cooler temperatures, such as those found in caves and cellars.

Historically, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, a single strain of yeast that ferments quickly and at warmer temperatures, was used to ferment all beers. This yeast strain, utilized for thousands of years, produces what we now call ale.

“Saccharomyces pastorianus, a hybrid resulting from the mating of top-fermenting ale yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and cold-tolerant Saccharomyces eubayanus, is responsible for the production of bottom-fermented lager beer. This mating occurred around the start of the 17th century,” says Dr. Mathias Hutzler, the study’s lead author and a beverage microbiologist at the Technical University of Munich, in a media release.

Researchers used a combination of historical documents, evolutionary data, and genetic information to trace the origins of this beverage back to the Munich brewery of the Duke of Bavaria in 1602. There, they discovered that S. cerevisiae contaminated a batch of beer brewed with wild variant S. eubayanus at a wheat brewery in Schwarzach, a small town in southern Germany.

Scroll down to also see the history of brewing in the United States

Brewing is among humanity’s oldest industries

There’s evidence of fermented beverages dating back at least 7,000 years in China and up to 13,000 years in Israel. Modern brewing practices were developed in Europe, where, until the Middle Ages, beer brewing was primarily associated with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the same yeast species still used today to make ale-style beer, wine, and bread.

However, most bee