There I was, at 7 a.m. on a Monday morning, pulling on rubber boots alongside Highway 1 in the parking lot at Schoolhouse Beach in Bodega Bay. The sun had just come up, and the minus tide was going out.
Why was I there? Well, I kept asking myself exactly that question on the hour-plus ride from Marin County. Bartenders don’t do early mornings really well, and I was joining a few other like-minded beverage service professionals on a seaweed-foraging expedition set up through Strong Arm Farm, Sonoma Coast Seaweed Co. and Sausalito Liquor Co. We were out there to harvest flavor, and that flavor specifically resides in seaweed.
Umami is the flavor we were looking for. First defined in 1908 by a Japanese scientist, it’s considered the “fifth” flavor, rounding out the field of salty, sweet, sour and bitter. Umami might be most recognizable to Americans in Japanese cuisine. There are two “natural” ways to access umami: one is through edible fungus and algae, like seaweed and mushrooms, and the other is through fermented or aged animal products, such as fish sauce or aged cheese. Umami’s salty-savory aspect is often not described so much as a taste.
“Umami is a sensation that transcends the difference between flavor and texture,” said Brian Noyes, the owner-operator of Sonoma Coast Seaweed Co. “Vaguely corresponding sensory experiences exist in the spice of chile, pepper or horseradish. But almost in the opposite of a spicy sensation, umami is the feeling, the experience, of having one’s mouth be embraced from the inside.”
I wasn’t thinking much about mouth embracing as I clambered over the slippery rocks, searching for specific seaweed. I was thinking back to rock climbing for abalone in the days when one could do that. (Abalone harvesting was halted in 2017.) Instead of looking for slowly moving invertebrates, here we were looking for stationary seaweed, specifically kombu and nori. Rather than carrying an abalone iron, we carried scissors.
“We are out of our element when the tide is low,” said Heidi Herrmann, the proprietor of Strong Arm Farm, a company in concert with Sonoma Coast Seaweed Co. “We humans are the guests in this space. Everything you see of the seaweed is edible.
And to that point, she picks up a piece of nori off of a nearby rock and pops it into her mouth.
Our little group was instructed by Noyes on how to trim the leaves of kombu in a fashion that allowed it to still continue to thrive.
“No more than 30%,” he said.
Brian Noyes forages for seaweed at Schoolhouse Beach. (Courtesy of Sausalito Liquor Co.)
“The commonality of a lot of us seaweed harvesters is that we are out there so much, we see how fragile that ecosystem really is. It’s really right in your hands — in my hands — literally,” said Herrmann, an environmental studies professor at Sonoma State University.
Sonoma Coast Seaweed Co., which was operated by Herrmann for 17 years, is transitioning its ownership to Noyes, which will be fully completed by September.
“As wild harvesters, we operate in a liminal space between the natural world and human civilization. We carry dual obligations: to protect and preserve the wild habitat from which we derive our living and to meet the needs and desires of society and the market,” said Noyes, who has two associate degrees, one in environmental horticulture and one in watershed management.
Dashi, the quintessential Japanese base broth, incorporates the two aspects of umami by combining kombu and katsuobushi (dried, fermented and often smoked tuna). And it may have been the Japanese who first introduced seaweed into gin making, but it could very well have been the Scottish who introduced it into the gin-making industry in California, albeit indirectly.
“I had heard of a distillery in Scotland called Isle of Harris that had created a gin using local sugar kelp,” said Scott Jampol, proprietor of Sausalito Liquor Co.
Intrigued by the taste and knowledgeable about the California coast, Jampol set out to find a local source for kelp.
“I don’t remember exactly who referred me to Heidi Herrmann, but she had been working in local seaweed foraging and sales for over a decade,” he said.
Herrmann also provides Jampol with Angelica root and Angelica seeds for his popular Marin Gin through Strong Arm Farm.
“We did not want to create a gin that tastes like seaweed,” Jampol said. “Not sure that would do well, but we did want to create one that is smoother than most other gins out there and that has a bright profile. And I think the nori contributes directly to that.”
Isle of Harris introduced their product in 2015, and California’s Gray Whale Gin, distilled in Sebastopol by Marsh Mokhtari, the former host of the Food Network’s “Extreme Chef,” followed quickly behind, introducing their gin flavored with kombu in 2016. Hanson of Sonoma has also just created a new “coastal” gin flavored with kombu, while Jampol opts for nori in his Marin Coastal Gin.
Oftentimes people think of umami as exclusively pertaining to monosodium glutamate (MSG). The two things are not the same. MSG is not found in nature and is synthesized in a laboratory by fermenting sugar-based ingredients with microbes and adding sodium (salt) as a stabilizer. Protein-rich seaweed is already naturally imbued with glutamates and needs no further processing, although drying increases the shelf life. Furthermore, some people have reported sensitivity to MSG.
We had less than an hour to forage for seaweed, predicted exactly by modern science’s absolute knowledge of the exact times for a minus tide, down to the minute.
“We’ve only got 15 minutes left,” said Noyes over the din of crashing waves steadily rising on a nearby beach.
When those 15 minutes were up, our crew gathered, cold, wet and tired, in the parking lot. Altogether we had collected nearly a dozen bags of both nori and kombu, some or all of which might ultimately find itself into one of your favorite local gins.
Details: For more information on Strong Arm Farm, go to strongarmfarm.com. For more information on Sausalito Liquor Co., go to sausalitoliquor.com. To book a seaweed-foraging trip, email Noyes at [email protected].
Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at [email protected]