Yeast from 1886 shipwreck makes new brew
- On 18/03/2019
- In Treasure Hunting / Recoveries
- 0 comments
From The Detroit News
The most distinguishing feature of Jamie Adams’ new ale isn’t its hoppy bite but its compelling backstory – brewed from yeast in bottles of beer that went down on a doomed steamship and languished on the ocean floor for 131 years.
Some who lined up to sample a swig of the new Deep Ascent ale at a craft beer festival last weekend say it provided a refreshing taste of another era.
“Just the concept that they could bring a beer bottle up from the bottom of the ocean … then be able to extract the yeast from it, that kind of chemistry is fascinating,” says beer enthusiast Peter Bowe of Schenectady. “And the beer is absolutely fantastic.”
Adams, a former Wall Street trader who opened Saint James Brewery in Long Island nearly two decades ago, says his beer grew out of his love of scuba diving. It was brewed with yeast extracted from bottles he and fellow divers salvaged from the SS Oregon, a luxury liner from Liverpool to New York that collided with a schooner and sank off Fire Island in 1886.
It lies 135 feet deep in an underwater cemetery known to local divers as Wreck Valley.
“It’s a wonderful, wonderful shipwreck to dive,” says Adams, 44, “I came up with the idea to make some beer if we came up with some intact bottles.”
He enlisted a team of divers in 2015 to search for bottles but didn’t hit pay dirt until 2017, after storms shifted sands and made the first-class dining room accessible. They dug down 15 feet in the sea bed to gain access, and then another six feet inside the ship to find a half-dozen bottles upside-down, corks intact. Later dives found 20 more bottles.
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