Portsmouth Brewing Created a Seaweed Beer

Of all the new flavors in craft beer, Portsmouth Brewing in coastal New Hampshire may have just created the most notable — from seaweed.

Portsmouth Brewing’s new seaweed beer is called Selkie, a Scottish red ale brewed with sugar kelp straight off the New England coast.

“I would say this is at the top end of the weirdness scale for brewing,” said Matt Gallagher, Portsmouth’s head brewer.

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The brewery partnered with the University of New Hampshire Aquaculture program, which harvests different varieties of kelp.

“It’s sort of like super kale of the sea,” explains Michael Chambers, an aquaculture specialist at UNH. “It’s full of vitamins and nutrients. [It has] trace elements in plants we don’t get from our gardens.”

UNH provided 60 pounds of the sugar kelp, which the brewery washed in a fresh watert, then boiled for about an hour in their kettle.

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Gallagher says his team put a lot of thought into how exactly to create an enjoyable flavor around the seaweed.

“I don’t want it to taste like low tide,” he said.

They landed on a Scottish red ale, where the sweetness of the barley would balance the briny quality of the plant.

Selkie is now on tap at the brewery’s Portsmouth taproom.

Jess Baker

Jess Baker walked into a beer fest in 2010 and realized beer had come a long way from what her dad had been drinking since the 70s. She served as editor-in-chief of CraftBeer.com from spring 2016 to spring 2020, bringing you stories about the people who are the heartbeat behind U.S. craft brewing. She's a runner, a die-hard Springsteen fan, a mom who is always scouting family-friendly breweries, and always in search of a darn good porter.

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