Seaweed has long had applications in beverages—brewers, for example, use Irish moss as a clarifier, and there is a Japanese tradition of kelp teas. Bartenders, inevitably, also have experimented with seaweed as a cocktail ingredient.
More recently, however, there’s been an apparent uptick in the use of seaweed in distilling, where it contributes a unique saline edge to spirits such as gin and vodka. Some coastal distillers are using seaweed to tie their products to their locales. And as savory, salty, umami notes in cocktails continue to be in vogue, seaweed is among the interesting additives capturing the attention of drinkers.
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Shanty Spirit
“I wanted it to be representative of the British coastline,” says Hugh Lambert of his Dorset-based Shanty Spirit, which features seaweed and wasabi. He says England’s gin boom is part of what inspired him: In 2019—the year he launched Shanty Spirit—figures showed that the number of English distilleries had eclipsed the number in Scottish ones for the first time. In the backdrop of the gin trend, Lambert says, he wanted to produce a drink that emulates gin’s complexity, but in which the seaweed flavor would shine.
After spending time in Asia, Lambert was already a fan of using both seaweed and wasabi in cooking. At first, he was curious about using seaweed as a raw ingredient to produce the spirit, but he ultimately decided the yield would be too low and the cost too high. Instead, Shanty Spirit gets a seaweed addition in much the same way that gins get their flavors from botanicals.
Lambert says his first step was to hone a recipe he loved from the variety of seaweeds available. “I experimented for a couple of years with lots of different seaweeds from around the U.K.,” he says. “Some really don’t distill well at all.” In some cases, the additions he trialed added an unwanted “fishy” note. The seaweeds he ultimately selected are a mix of bought and foraged ingredients, all of them British.
Lambert says he tried macerating and distilling the different seaweeds to see which he preferred, but nailing down the recipe and process took some time. “Initially, we did it on a copper alembic still,” he says. Ultimately, however, he chose to vacuum-distill each botanical, to extract the most delicate notes. He found that this approach promoted better flavors across the board.
He says Shanty Spirit has received an excellent response so far, but there also have been unexpected challenges. “I would say that it’s quite an education piece with the consumer,” he says—though, he adds that he relishes the opportunity to help consumers try something new. “Even though seaweed is becoming more mainstream, I still think it can put people off until they’ve tasted it.”
For botanical spirits that break the mold of classic gins, Lambert says he thinks the sky’s the limit. “I want to be able to explain to people that gin [is] basically a botanical vodka,” he says. “Still a lot of people don’t get that.”
Shanty Spirit isn’t the only spirit produced in Great Britain that includes seaweed. In Scotland, the Isle of Harris Distillery makes a gin infused with local, sustainably gathered sugar kelp. In Wales, meanwhile, St David’s Distillery produces a gin that includes foraged sea oak seaweed, which imparts a slight sweetness.
Umami from the Deeps
The same trend is developing across the Atlantic, in North America.
Gray Whale Gin, from the Golden State Distillery in Sebastopol, California, gets a mix of six botanicals, including kombu seaweed from the Mendocino coast; it adds an earthy flavor. It’s a product often used by Matthew Biancaniello, cocktail chef and author of Eat Your Drink. Often embracing seasonality to create culinary cocktail pairings, Biancaniello has used seaweed in a gin gimlet, served alongside lobster.
Pacific House Gin, produced by the Gold Bar distillery in San Francisco, is another brand that uses Mendocino-coast seaweed in their Deep Umami small-batch gin. “The sea kelp is thrown into a still and vapor-infused into our gin,” says master distiller Monty Paulsen. “The distilled portion produces a fine aroma, and the large pieces in the still give a more distinct flavor. There are traces of salt from the ocean that can be tasted.”
Meanwhile, on the shores of Conception Bay in Newfoundland, Canada, the Newfoundland Distillery sources dulse seaweed from the Grand Banks, on the southeastern part of the island, for their seaweed gin. “We macerate the dulse in 70 percent ABV alcohol,” says cofounder Peter Wilkins. “We also put it in the gin basket along with the juniper. … We … filter the alcohol for the macerated dulse and add it to the gin.” The distillery uses a custom-made 1,000-liter copper still to produce the gin.
In Camden, Maine, Blue Barren Distillery began by producing an eau de vie from blueberries from the co-owner’s family farm. In their mission to support local agriculture, they also decided to produce Barren’s Sugar Kelp Vodka. After distilling with the kelp, the team uses it as fertilizer in their garden.
“The only tricky part for this product was just getting the cut straight,” says Andrew Stewart, owner and distiller. Their aim is “to pull off the really heavy, oily, low-seashore aspect of it, so that the bright, saline, briny, umami flavor comes through.”
The seaweed goes into a barrel with the spirit to infuse for about a month. The team stirs it regularly, then they dilute it before putting it in the still. Although it took a few tries to get it right, the results were well worth the effort. As a bonus, it meant that the team could support a friend who runs Atlantic Sea Farms, a large seaweed cultivation company in Biddeford, Maine. Atlantic Sea Farms partners with fisher-farmers who harvest seaweed in their off-season from fishing. In the 2024 season, they harvested a record 1.3 million pounds of seaweed.
“It plays really well with lemon,” Stewart says of the Sugar Kelp Vodka, adding that he likes it on the rocks with fresh citrus fruit. Meanwhile, as craft cocktails continue to get more inventive, Stewart says the seaweed spirit has been a big hit with bartenders, who include it in their dirty martinis and bloody Marys. “We do find lots of sushi restaurants [and] seafood restaurants gravitate toward it,” he says.
Blue Barren also produces exclusive gins for select restaurants; one of those builds on the seaweed-umami to also include an aspect of allium (i.e., onion, garlic, shallot, etc.). “We’ll ask them what they’re looking for flavor profile-wise, and then we’ll go away and make three or four different small batches,” he says.
Besides imparting saltiness and flavor to spirits, seaweed and kelp also boast strong sustainability credentials. As a low-impact, nutrient-rich raw material, they grow quickly without inputs such as pesticides and fertilizer—and, at the same time, they pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, as the beverage industry pushes toward reducing its carbon footprint—with raw materials often sourced, tens, hundreds, or even thousands of miles away—using an ingredient found close to their doorsteps is a huge plus.
For Stewart, the kelp ticks all the boxes. “It’s … a great carbon sink, it traps CO2, it’s low-impact on the environment. It’s just a win-win-win.”
