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BloombergBusinessweek/SEPTEMBER2,2019THEELEMENTSingeographyfromtheUniversityofWashington,then
movedtoSanFranciscoin1999.Hespentacoupleofyearsat
TickleInc.,anearlysocialnetworkingsitethatwasacquired
byMonster.comin2004 and subsequently shut down. He
then decamped to business school in Copenhagen, nearer to
hisScandinavianextendedfamily.In 2006 hemovedtoOslo
toworkforOperaSoftware,anexperiencethatconvinced
himhecouldsuccessfullylauncha startup.InJuly2009 he
set about trying to develop an app for curating other apps. But
founding an app-discovery company a year after Apple Inc.’s
App Store opened might not have been the wisest of moves.
He and his business partner had different visions for how to
proceed and couldn’t build it quickly enough. Without soft-
ware engineers or money to hire them, the company went
nowhere. Jacobsen describes the experience as “a slow, pain-
ful burn and death.”
But his time in Europe had given him a better idea. A girl-
friendhadflooredhimbyspending$10ona smallpack-
ageofMaldon,a Britishbrandofseasaltknownfor its
pyramid-shaped flakes. He remembers sprinkling it on top
of a cheap meal of canned mackerel, olive oil, arugula, and
tomato sauce. “I was blown away by how much better good
salt made something,” he says.
After moving home to Portland, he scoured stores, looking
for flaky salts, but all he could find was Maldon. He became
obsessed with producing his own sea salt. His first attempt
involved plunking an inflatable kiddie pool in his backyard
and filling it up with ocean water, to no avail. “So I started
trying to heat seawater in pots and pans and ovens,” he says.
He found that steadily applying low heat over the course of
a day produced satisfyingly tasty grains. Those early experi-
ments formed the basis of the two-week process Jacobsen Salt
uses at Netarts Bay.
Set against the backdrop of Douglas fir trees in Tillamook
State Forest, Netarts Bay is home to the 6,000-square-foot facil-
itywhereJacobsen’s11 full-timesaltmakersproduce180,000
poundseachyear.Hedidn’tarrivetherebyaccident. In
June2011 he loaded his Portuguese water dog, Lykke, and a
bunch of five-gallon buckets into his Subaru Forester and made
his way north to Neah Bay in Washington, gathering 27 samples
of seawater as he went. Once back in Portland, he made salt
from each sample in search of the crunchiest flakes, the best
coloring, and the right aftertaste. The waters of Netarts BayThe Jacobsen facility in Netarts Bay provedtohaveawinningsecretingredient:oysters,thousands
ofwhichpopulatetheseven-mile-long estuary.
Jacobsen spent the rest of his summer weekends guarding
steam kettles in the shared commercial kitchenofKitchenCru,
anincubatorforculinarystartupsinPortland.EveryFriday
he’dgettothekitchenandspendthenext 72 hoursthere,
taking the occasional half-hour nap in the dry pantry as he
soughttheoptimaltemperaturetoformlargeflakes.
Themaintraitsofa greatsaltaregenerallyheldtobe
color,texture,andflavor. Color is pure presentation—how
white a crisp, shiny salt looks sprinkled on food. A salt’s
texture affects where it lands and how it dissolves on your
tongue, which influences taste. Flavor, following from the
chemical composition, is what really distinguishes one salt
from another. Sodium chloride is the backbone, but salts
with a bitter aftertaste contain potassium. Something like
Maldon has virtually no potassium. “Flaky salts have a really
high percentage of sodium chloride and really trace amounts
of other minerals,” says Dan Souza, editor of Cook’s Illustrated
anda chefonthePBScookingshowAmerica’sTestKitchen.
Saltthat’spleasinglytangywillhavehadcalciumandpotas-
siumdepositsboiledout,followed by a slow, steady evapo-
rationofmagnesium.
Jacobseneventuallybroughtsamplesofhissalttoa new-
vendorfairhostedbya localgrocerychain.RyanWhite,the
chain’sbuyer,likedit somuchheaskedforordersforeachof
thegrocer’s 13 stores. With a viable business in sight, Jacobsen
applied for a saltmaking license from the state department of
agriculture, received a permit to pump water out of the bay,
won U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, got funding
from friends and family, and formed his company. For several
years he drove bay water to Portland before finally buying an
old oyster farm on the Netarts coast, adding some tanks and
pans,andhiringa staff.Hewas,asfarashecantell,thefirst
persontosetupa saltworksontheOregoncoastsinceLewis
andClark,whotemporarilyestablishedoneabout 50 miles
northintheearly19thcentury.J
ust outside his facility, Jacobsen hoists a chunk of cal-
ciumasbigasa humanhead.“Thisis whatoystersarefil-
teringoutoftheseawatertobuildtheirshells,”hesays.
Aftermaking its way through a lone PVC pipeline, the water
reaches a drafty shed where two gargantuan pots, wider than
monster truck tires, complete the work the oysters begin. The
pots are boiling hot; Jacobsen says he’ll never reveal the pre-
cise temperature.
Thefilteredbrineis transferredtotheoysterpans,where
itslowlycooks overa periodofthreedays.During this
“low-boiling”period,asmagnesiumleachesout,saltcrystals
form and clump together, densifying and sinking. When a
batch is ready, it’s shoveled from the pan, becoming flake
salt. The brine is then boiled off completely, leaving smaller,
coarse crystals that become the basis of Jacobsen’s kosher salt.
Batches of both varieties are then transferred to drip pans
and dropped off in two sauna-like dehydrator rooms, where
they dry out for three more days. Kosher salts are packaged
on their own or sent out for flavor infusion. The prized prod-
uct, though, is the flake. Before being packaged, it’s sifted by
hand in gold pans and sieves to remove any trace of calcium.