I started working on seaweed 20 years
ago as an undergraduate studying all
things to do with how seaweed defend themselves in nature from fish and
bacteria. Ever since then we found new
and interesting things to investigate.
Newstead brewery reached out to us about a month ago to see whether or not we could
provide them in some fresh farmed
seaweed so we were able to produce a
particular type of seaweed called sea
lettuce in around about a week we grew
up enough to be able to be used in the
brew in this particular style of beer.
This would be an Australian first using
land-based farmed seaweed.
Paired to this particular style of beer we thought was a natural marriage simply because gose is
historically do have that salty saline
type character and we use the seaweed as
a vehicle to impart that saline
character. Seaweeds have particular types
of elements like potassium magnesium in
this case zinc and iron so these are
some of those core nutrients that we
need to be able to live.
This particular sea lettuce that we used in the brew today has more iron than spinach
other seaweeds have more potassium than bananas so there's always like for like
comparisons that we can do to the seaweed but just at the moment it's not really
embedded in our culture but we're hoping
to change that.
it's quite unique I think we've done a
really good job in parting the seaweed
component especially there is a bold umami type flavour going on in there which is quite exciting.
So we have about 5,000 species of seaweed off the
coast of Australia
and none of them are actually commercially
utilised at the moment so this huge
bounty of opportunity and all these
different properties in those seaweeds
for different types of applications and
so it's really about finding the right
seaweed for the right application and
working with the right partners to do
that. Beer creates a social environment in
which to talk about various things, various topical things so to create that
awareness not only about the benefits of
seaweed but also about responsible and
sustainable farming of seaweed is a
fantastic initiative.
