At the «Market» you can delve into our archive of brewing experiments, trails and attempts, as well as a boom of herbal spices from the north. You can also get food and drinks in our marked, as well as exciting products from Træna's own algae innovators, The Northern Company. Outside our laboratory you will find a sculpture that produces seaweed lye from rain water and inside the doors «Giant Colony Morphology». A work consisting of various yeast cultures and enzyme-producing mold from the eastern world. But if you manage to find our hidden seaweed bar you`ll get a REAL taste of the ocean!

There will be Algemi in a performance by Marita Isobel Solberg and watch out as she enters a state of trance infused by weed from the ocean! Our very best slam poet of the north, Ingvild Austgulen, will then take the stage with «Tang & Tara». In addition, the film «Devil's Apron - A journey in Seaweed, punk, and Brewing culture in the North» is shown continuously at our cinema in the old fire station. The exhibition will culminate in this year's Pride Parade that will enter our Algal world on Friday.

The complex carbohydrates in seaweed are a big challenge to break down into fermentable sugars. With the sculpture «Lutgenerateor», we are working on producing lye from seaweed ashes and rainwater, which gives a weak kelp lye that we hope can help us in the brewing process.

It consists of a container that collects rainwater at the top, a dropper that feeds a glass cylinder filled with seaweed ash (from the bonfire at the market) and a beaker for collecting ready-made seaweed lye at the bottom.

“Does beer made from seaweed have any sales potential?
-It certainly has, but we are not that interested in the commercial side. It may easily become a limiting factor and we are more concerned with other aspects, such as the awareness-raising element of how to use seaweed, algae and other resources from the ocean and the landscape of the north. And we are much into the conversations that follows what we are doing.
We believe that storytelling and the good discussion are a currency in our time.

Microbreweries and building of identity around local beer are getting a lot of attention these days. At the same time, the only local ingredient is often the water from the river. The malt usually comes from Bavaria, the yeast from England and the hops from the USA. If you are going to brew something local in Northern Norway, it is difficult to start with fruit. You can do it with berries, but picking enough takes a huge effort. That is why we looking into vegetables from the ocean, which has an enormous potensial and are found in large quantities”

-Leif Steinholdt / Helgelands Blad

The exhibition was supported by Sparebankstiftelsen Nord-Norge & Nordnorsk Kunstnersenter