Bequia Sea Salt 101: Jerry Simpson's Patented Solar Evaporation Stills

In addition to the pristine seawater surrounding the island of Bequia, our finishing salt is remarkably pure and flavorful due to the innovative, patented solar evaporation stills designed by our owner, Jerry Simpson. The unique design of the stills is based on a 1986 memoir Jerry read as a young man entitled Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea about the author’s survival on a life raft in the Atlantic Ocean. He created a mini solar evaporation still by having sea water in a cup covered with plastic at a certain angle to produce fresh drinking water. Years later when Jerry was experimenting with conventional solar evaporation methods, he remembered the story and was inspired to attempt a larger version utilizing the concept. After some tinkering and tweaking, he arrived at the current design, which is as beautiful as it is functional. These stills allow us to provide the highest quality sea salt, free of any contaminants and retaining the highest levels of healthy minerals, essential trace elements and rich flavors specific to these waters, as well as providing fresh drinking water for the community.

Salt has been harvested from the sea for ages. The most popular technique for harvesting sea salt is the utilization of a salt evaporation pond, where shallow pools of saltwater are exposed to the environment and allowed to evaporate.  After the water evaporates, the remaining salt deposits are collected.  Since these pools of saltwater are exposed, the water and salt deposits can become contaminated by elements such as insects and bird feces.  Moreover, the evaporation process is unregulated, and thus can be inhibited by environmental factors, such as rain. 

There are other more advanced techniques, such as industrial distillation, kiln drying, boiling, and vacuum evaporation, etc., but they utilize large amounts of energy and much of the rich flavor and healthy benefits of the salt are diminished in the process.

As our stills are covered by glass, the salt crystals are contaminant free, and slower solar evaporation produces a desirably coarser grain, as well as the coveted ‘Fleur de Sel’ crystals which are mixed together in every batch. This combination makes our salt unique in both texture and flavor.

The whole process from start to finish takes about 6 days. The seawater is collected and delivered to our holding tanks, where it is then gravity fed into bins within the stills. About an inch and a half of water produces ‘briney’ crystals which are then scraped and transferred to drying screens in the two step process.

We started the company with 65 stills which produce about 100 lbs of salt each week. We just received delivery of 70 more stills thanks to a grant from the Caribbean Export Development Agency. This will allow us to double the amount of salt were producing to meet ever increasing increased demand.