SAMOA, Calif. (KIEM)-From Humboldt Bay to tables and store shelves around the country, a local business owner says he is one the largest flake salt producers in the country.
“This is the boiling pan here, where I’ll boil a hundred hours a week, so about 12-hours a day,” said Bryon Duty, founder and owner of Pacific Salt Flakes.
It’s a routine owner and founder of Pacific Flake Sea Salt has done for about four years now, from the Samoa peninsula.
“All this gets filtered out to the next stage this is the crystallizing pan, so what you see here is about 30-hours of salt crystallizing.”
Which means, now, it’s time to harvest.
Duty says he is a self-taught salt maker and first sourced seawater from Bodega Bay.
Originally from Lake County, Duty now calls Humboldt County home and the bay is his bread and butter.
“The final and highest quality product we could make was a fire evaporated finishing flake sea salt,” he said.
Which according to Duty is one the cleanest and purest form of the mineral, his salt is not in rock form but in flakes.
Duty says Humboldt Bay provides the best sea water because the water in the bay recycles every 24-hours from high to low tides.
The Alaska current brings in cold, fresh seawater which has a denser sodium content which is perfect for sea salt production.
Duty says, producing sea salt flakes is more than just boiling sea water.
“That white pipe line runs about 200 feet all the way to the ocean over there by the dock, and then on the dock I have a pump, and then I use that pump to fill that tank out there, from that tank to this pan. I move it to this boiling pan,”
And from this boiling pan it will concentrate and go from sea water to brine
“From that brine I take to here, the crystallizing pan and then crystallize it.”
And then a marketable product for the masses which is 100% Humboldt made.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic Pacific Salt Flakes’ yield went from about 700lbs down to 330lbs, his biggest clients were high end restaurants in the Bay Area.
Duty has expenses such as rent, packaging and propane, as far at the sea water, that’s another story.
“So the sea water is free and we’re not running out anytime soon,” he said.
Pacific Flake Sea Salt is available locally at the North Coast Co-op and at Eureka Natural Foods.
For more information click here.
