Spirulina BLUwater is the best algae I've ever drank (but still kinda weird)

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.

Blue-green algae has never been a food on my radar. But it turns out dried cyanobacteria both looks lovely and is packed with protein and amino acids and other things that are good for your body. So, let's try some spirulina.

FULfoods has been working to make spirulina, "the dried biomass of cyanobacteria" per Wikipedia, into something more appealing than its origins would suggest. While the food has been a part of diets in the Americas for centuries, it's generally been a tough sell despite its benefits. Since it's 2025, what better way to do that than in sparkling water?

Spirulina BLUwater promises hydration, vitamins, antioxidants and more across a three flavor lineup of seltzer-ish slim cans. The question is if they did enough work to make you forget you're drinking algae.

Let's see what we've got.

Sparkling White Peach: B-

True to the label, this pours with a light current of carbonation and a lovely, Caribbean ocean water blue tint. The smell off the top is sharp peach, leaving behind a tang that feels more akin to a wine cooler or fuzzy navel than an antioxidant-enriched drink. But that may just be because I've had too many bad experiences with peach-adjacent canned cocktails and hard seltzers.

It's an interesting first sip. I expected it to be closer to a seltzer, but there's significantly more sweet flavor than you'd get in a can of La Croix. It's not sugary -- there are no gummy peach rings involved here -- but it's got a dense, if simple, peach flavor that lasts through each sip before those bubbles snap it off.

Whatever imprint the algae put on this is minimal; I can't taste anything different aside from a minor, almost creamy aspect that makes me feel like this would be pretty good with a touch of vanilla in it. The carbonation fades pretty quickly, which is a slight bummer at first and gets progressively worse as it warms.

But if you drink it at a reasonable pace you're left with a drink that lives up to the flavor promised on the can.

Oh, it does leave you with some weird burps. Maybe that's just me.

Sparkling Pink Grapefruit: C

Grapefruit isn't my favorite flavor; I tend to reserve it for cocktails. But I appreciate Blu reached out to lesser traveled fruits for its, uh, algae drink.

The grapefruit smell itself is a bit harsh and sour, but it lacks the powdered chewable vitamin scent that accompanies some of the lower effort grapefruit drinks. It pours a lovely blue and the bubbles once again pop away from the head by the time you put the can down.

The taste is solid, but the spirulina leaves an aftertaste that was slightly noticeable in the peach and unavoidable in the pink grapefruit. It rings your tongue with a vegetative staleness. It's not overpowering, but it lingers and reminds you this isn't a typical seltzer.

That washes away the positives of a well balanced and flavorful grapefruit up front. It gets worse as it sits in the glass, too -- losing the carbonation and cold makes this a bit of a chore to drink. Pouring it over ice releases the bubbles more quickly, so you're dealing with a tradeoff no matter how you drink it.

Raspberry Yuzu: B

I saved this for last because it has the biggest capacity to go either way. Raspberry and citrus could be awesomely balanced between sweet and tart. Or it can be sour and too organic.

The smell off the top is more yuzu than raspberry, but both show up. While the flat spirulina flavor is prevalent throughout, the two acidic tastes do a decent enough job of cutting through that. They're well mixed; neither dominates and there's enough sweet agave syrup to keep things from being overly tart.

As a result, it works the best of any BLUwater's flavors. That means it's still swimming upstream against a drink that, while not nearly as gross as it seems, still does taste at least a little like algae. But this does a good job hiding that, creating a drink that tastes good  but is slightly weird.

I can drink a can of this with few problems, but it does get a bit old toward the end. But I will say I'm drinking these after my daughter's elementary school came back from winter break and I've so far avoided a debilitating cold (knocks on every piece of wood within reach). So maybe there's something to say about its immune system support -- though that's totally anecdotal, so don't take my word for it.

Would I drink it instead of a Hamm's?

This a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I drink Spirulina BLUwater over a cold can of Hamm’s?

I'm sure there's value here as a detox tool. Drinking it instead of a beer in the middle of a tailgate would help space out your boozing and help you feel better the next day. Just don't let it warm up too much, or else you really start to feel like, yep, you're drinking algae.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Spirulina BLUwater review: It's algae. It's still pretty decent.