Ocean To Tap: Seaweed Beer Is A Thing And It’s Sustainable

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You’ve seen sugar kelp before. Its leaves resemble lasagna noodles and you’ve probably seen it washed up ashore on coasts around the world. The Portsmouth Brewery in New Hampshire set out to make a Scottish red ale with sugar kelp and it calls it Selkie.

You can get Selkie on tap at The Portsmouth Brewery and in its retail store when it’s available. The food world has embraced seaweed for its oceanic flavors and health benefits for years and this aquatic beer takes it center stage. This Scottish red ale has an ABV (alcohol by volume) of 4.9 percent so it’s not overly strong.

A post shared by Portsmouth Brewery (@portsmouthbrewery) on Jul 27, 2017 at 9:39am PDT

Selkie showcases a salty, briny and slightly vegetal flavor (meaning it might remind you of vegetables) with a sweet malt body. You might get a delayed salty taste on your lips even after you’ve finished your beer.

The first batch of Selkie was made with 60 pounds of seaweed and the second batch, with 120 pounds of seaweed, including two types: dulse and alaria. The beer is named after a mythical creature — within Irish, Scottish and Icelandic folklore — that resembles a seal in the water, but can take human form on land. Brewery owner Joanne Francis got the idea from a Scottish beer called Kelpie.

A post shared by Portsmouth Brewery (@portsmouthbrewery) on Jul 13, 2017 at 4:00pm PDT

Portsmouth Brewery partnered with the UNH Aquaculture program to grow the sugar kelp and harvest it in a local and sustainable way. According to NPR, The Portsmouth team aims to merge craft beer and seaweed in a non-gimmicky way, but as a quality balanced beer.

Francis told to NPR that she dreamed of making a kelp beer for over a decade. She calls it “a perfect session beer or a low-alcohol beer that can be drunk over an extended period of time.”