Deep Ascent – a historical story about yeast

Saint James Brewery | Holbrook, New York | est. 2012

Jamie Adams is not only the founder of Saint James Brewery and a brewer, but he’s also an experienced deep sea diver. This is the story of how he recovered yeast from bottles found on the wreck of The Oregon which occurred off the coast of New York in 1886 and propagated the yeast to brew Deep Ascent.

“The whole project I liken to a runner jumping over hurdles. The first one was Could we access the area while we were diving? – Yes, we did that. Could we bring the bottles to the surface without damaging the yeast inside?” – Jamie Adams

“With Deep Ascent, we really wanted to replicate what would have been on that ship and that led to us doing the English IPA. That was the trend at the time. That was the most widely sold beer in the world. Those English IPAs at the time were different than the beers that we have now. Most of the beer was aged in casks up to a year so you aren’t really getting that fresh hop aroma that is so common now. It was more of a balanced beer.” – Jamie Adams

Listen to the conversation with Jamie and Rachel: